Metal structure damage location pattern matching method based on virtual damage characteristics

To solve the problem of pattern matching method damage completeness which was difficult to achieve in practice, the concept of virtual damage characteristics (VDC) was presented through abstracting and refining metal structure common damage characteristics. VDC in different locations were designed and then analyzed to obtain the strain fields and build the characteristic vectors which reflected the location information, and further the structure state pattern database was built. The calculation methods of the characteristic vectors similarity and matching degree were defined. The actual damage characteristic vector was put into the pattern database to search and match. The matching results were given according to matching degree from high to low. Finally, the test verification was done and showed the proposed method in the paper can be carried out to determine the structure damage location.