Abstract
Damage estimation of bridge structures has recently received considerable attention in the light of maintenance and retrofitting of existing structures under service loads and after natural disasters. A method for the damage assessment of bridge structures using a damage index technique is presented. The damage index is formulated for the changes of modal properties due to the change of the stiffness. In order to verify the method which is presented, numerical analysis is conducted on simple beam models. Each FE model is subjected to different damage scenarios, i.e., locations and degrees of damage. Results of numerical analysis indicate that the proposed method is capable of detecting inflicted damages using the eigenvalue of only first mode.