• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.17 no.2 s.75
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• pp.173-181
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• 2005

This study deals with a method to identify damages of free vibrating thin plate structures using the combined finite element method (FEM) and the advanced uniform micro-genetic algorithm.To solve the inverse problem using the combined method, this study uses several natural frequencies instead of mode shapes in a structure as the measured data. The technique described in this paper allows us not only to detect the damaged elements but also to find their numbers, locations, and the extent of damage.To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method, the algorithm is applied to a free vibrating steel thin plate structures with arbitrary damages. From the standpoint of computation efficiency, the proposed method in this study has advantages when compared with the existing simple genetic algorithms. The numerical examples demonstrate that the method using micro-genetic algorithms can possibly detect correctly the damages of thin plates from only several natural frequencies instead of their natural modes.