Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

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Computers and Structures

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruc

Adaptive reference updating for vibration-based structural health

monitoring under varying environmental conditions
Seung-Seop Jin a, Soojin Cho b, Hyung-Jo Jung a,⇑
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea
b
School of Urban and Environmental Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan 689-798, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, a novel adaptive principal component analysis is proposed for identifying structural
Received 22 March 2014 damage under varying environmental conditions (i.e., both stationary and non-stationary conditions).
Accepted 8 June 2015 The proposed method is based on an adaptive reference scheme in multivariate statistical analysis.
Available online 29 June 2015
One crucial advantage of the proposed method is the ability of generative learning to capture the intrinsic
behavior of the normal condition. The proposed method is numerically tested with noise in measurement
Keywords: under environmental variations. Its performance is compared with conventional methods (i.e., the fixed
Vibration-based structural health
reference scheme). The numerical study demonstrates the superior performance of the proposed method
monitoring
Adaptive reference updating
for structural damage detection.
Environmental variation Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Principal component analysis

1. Introduction damage-sensitive features [7,8]. Since the model-based method is

The performance of civil engineering structures (e.g., bridges,
buildings, etc.) under operational and environmental conditions
may decrease over time because of the deterioration of structural
materials and extreme events such as earthquakes. Conventionally,
visual inspection has been widely conducted to detect damage and
evaluate the condition of existing structures. However, it is known
to be subjective and inefficient for large and complex structures.
To address these limitations of visual inspection, vibration-based
damage detection has been extensively studied over the last several
decades, because it is nondestructive and cost-effective to imple-
ment measurement systems.
The vibration-based damage detection approach can be distin-
guished into two categories according to whether or not computer
simulation models (e.g., finite element models) are used [1]:
model-based and model-free methods. The model-based method
is typically an inverse problem to quantify the damage by updating
a computer simulation model through comparing model prediction
with direct measurements [2,3]. On the other hand, the model-free
method is attractive in the sense that it requires only
vibration-based damage-sensitive features as training data to
define the reference model (i.e., baseline) [4–6]. In the method,
the natural frequency, mode-shape, mode-shape curvature and
modal flexibility are commonly used as the vibration-based
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hjung@kaist.ac.kr (H.-J. Jung).
computationally expensive due to an iterative analysis of a com-
puter simulation model, the model-free method is well-suited for
the continuous and real-time applications of the early damage
detection.
However, it is well recognized that the vibration-based
damage-sensitive features (e.g., natural frequency) depend not
only on damage but also on environmental conditions (e.g., tem-
perature) [9–14]. If the change of the environmental condition is
not taken into account, false-positive or false-negative damage
diagnosis could occur, and consequently vibration-based damage
detection may become unreliable. To address the environmental
effect, a data-normalization method is required. Data-normalization
methods can be categorized as input-output data-normalization
and output-only data-normalization. The input-output data-
normalization method constructs a mathematical model to map the
environmental variables (i.e., input) on vibration-based damage-
sensitive features (i.e., output) [9,10,13]. On the other hand, the
output-only data-normalization method requires only the vibration-
based damage-sensitive features. Once the vibration-based damage-
sensitive features are obtained from the normal condition, a
multivariate statistical analysis is performed to account for the
pattern of the feature variation due to the environmental effect
[4–6,11,12].
In the case of large and complex structures such as bridges and
buildings, the output-only data-normalization method based on
multivariate statistical analysis would be more appropriate from
the practical point of view, because it is quite challenging to fully
represent the input-output relationship due to the difficulty in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruc.2015.06.001
0045-7949/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
212 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224
Fig. 1. Procedure of PCA for data-normalization.
Fig. 2. Adaptation to construct new data window in APCA.
determining proper environmental variables and measurement
locations in advance. In the output-only data-normalization
method, it is generally required to decompose a covariance matrix
of the vibration-based damage-sensitive features over the normal
condition for establishing the multivariate statistical analysis.
Therefore, it is very important to properly describe the normal
condition.
Previous studies have focused on normalization techniques (i.e.,
multivariate statistical models) such as principal component (PCA)
[11] and factor analysis [12]. These works used a fixed reference
data set from the normal condition to construct a multivariate sta-
tistical model. However, it was reported that the fixed reference
model was not appropriate to describe the normal condition if a
system showed bi-linear behavior which was not stationary and
time-invariant [9,10]. If vibration-based damage-sensitive features
and environmental variations show bi-linear relationship around
0 °C and the vibration-based damage-sensitive features above
0 °C are used as the normal condition, the vibration-based
damage-sensitive features below 0 °C may be misinterpreted as
the damage or the false-negative alarm (i.e., the invalid data set).
Generally in real applications, there is no prior information on
the system behavior at the initial phase, and the effects of environ-
mental and operational conditions can be identified through
long-term monitoring. If the insufficient or invalid data set is used
for the fixed reference model, the performance of damage detec-
tion would be quite disastrous [14]. However, the issue related to
obtaining a valid set of the normal condition has not been widely
investigated yet, although the performance of output-only
data-normalization is strongly affected by the description of the
normal condition.
In this paper, an adaptive reference approach is proposed to
describe the normal condition properly. It enables to capture the
intrinsic system behavior by continuously updating the reference
model before detecting damage. The feasibility of the adaptive ref-
erence approach as an alternative of the conventional fixed refer-
ence approach in damage detection is investigated. To evaluate
the performance of the proposed method to the various situations,
two main factors are considered: (1) dynamic environmental vari-
ations (i.e., stationary and non-stationary temperature history) and
(2) intrinsic system behavior on environmental variations (i.e.,
quasi-linear and bi-linear). In this regard, a series of the numerical
studies with different damage scenarios are carried out as follows:
(1) quasi-linear behavior under stationary; (2) quasi-linear behav-
ior under non-stationary; and (3) bi-linear behavior under
non-stationary. The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes both conventional and adaptive reference
schemes in multivariate statistical analysis. Section 3 presents
the preliminary works related to the numerical study. Section 4
shows the numerical study to evaluate the performances of both
methods under various system conditions with noise. In the end
of Section 4, the computational efforts of both methods are com-
pared. The paper concludes with some discussion in Section 5.
2. Multivariate statistical analysis for data-normalization
2.1. Principal component analysis (PCA)
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a multivariate statistical
analysis method, also known as proper orthogonal decompo-
sition. In the method, a set of possibly correlated variables are
converted into a set of linearly uncorrelated variables. For
 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 213

Fig. 3. Comparison between CPCA and APCA.

Fig. 4. Numerical model.

data-normalization, PCA considers the environmental effect as hid- us denote by the 2-dimentional vector xk a set of the features iden-
den variables. The fundamental idea is that a variation of the struc- tified at time tk (k = 1, . . ., N) with the number of samples (N). It is
tural response due to the change of environmental conditions can assumed that environmental variations are mainly responsible
be accounted by a multivariate statistical analysis. For example, let for the dispersion of the features. In the training data set from
214 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

Table 1 PC 1) is expressed to the highest variation of the features, so it is

Material and geometrical properties. associated with the main environmental effects. On the other hand,
Properties Values the PC 2 expresses the effect of secondary factors which are uncor-
Mass density 7827 kg m3 related to the PC1. The procedure of PCA based on the fixed refer-
Poisson’s ratio 0.3 ence model is graphically illustrated in Fig. 1 and summarized as
Young’s modulus 200 GPa follows:
Total length 20 m (1 m@20EA)

Step 1: The PCs are extracted by singular value decomposition

of a covariance matrix of the features from the normal condi-
tion (Fig. 1(a)).
30
Step 2: The original features are projected into the major PC
Temperature (T)

(i.e., dimension reduction, Fig. 1(b)) and re-mapped to the orig-

20
inal spaces (i.e., dimension reconstruction, Fig. 1(c)).
10 Step 3: This projection and re-mapping using certain PCs leads
0 to the loss of information (i.e., E). The novelty is defined using
the Euclidean or Mahalanobis distances based on the loss of
-10
information (Fig. 1(d)).
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Step 4: Statistical analysis is performed to construct a threshold
Sample (N) value for outlier statistics.
Step 5: Once a new feature is obtained, projection and remap-
Fig. 5. Time history of temperature.
ping of the new feature is performed by the PCs of the normal
condition. The novelty index of new data is used to detect the
damage.
Temperature (T)

35 The basic concept of PCA for data-normalization is to remove

30 the variance due to the environmental effect under the normal
25 condition. By removing this effect, the loss of information via pro-
20 jection and re-mapping is used to construct threshold values for
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 novelty detection. In the absence of damage, the outlier statistics
Sample (N) value of new data should remain at the same level within reference
data (i.e., below threshold). Damage should lead to departure of the
(a) Stationary environment variation (1~400th samples) feature from the level of reference data, and outlier statistics
Temperature (T)

30 increases significantly as shown in Fig. 1(e).

20
10
0
-10
2.2. Adaptive principal component analysis (APCA)
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N)
Although many successful applications of PCA can be found in
(b) Non-stationary environment variation (1~889th samples)
various fields, it is obvious that the success of PCA is contingent
Fig. 6. Dynamic environmental variations. on how much accurately a normal model is described. In the case
of a large and complex structural system, however, it may not be
easy to describe the normal condition because the system exposes
large variations of ambient temperatures and operational loads
the normal condition, the major variability may be expressed by (i.e., live loads). In addition, abundant data sets to establish a PC
the combination of environmental effects. Therefore, the features model at the initial phase may not be available from the normal
from the normal condition vary mainly along the directions of condition, so that it would be insufficient to describe the normal
the principal components (PCs) with the highest variations. The condition. Furthermore, using the invalid data for a reference PC
two PCs are generated as shown in Fig. 1(a). The major PC (i.e., model may cause a more serious problem. If there is the invalid

1.06
1.25
1.05
Elastic Modulus (E)
Elastic Modulus (E)

1.2
1.04

1.03 1.15

1.02 1.1

1.01
1.05
1
1

-10 0 10 20 30 -10 0 10 20 30
Temperature (T) Temperature (T)
(a) Quai-linear behavior (b) Bi-linear behavior

Fig. 7. Temperature dependence for Young’s modulus.

 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 215

Fig. 8. Flowchart of simulation for feature extraction.

Table 2 aggressive environmental variations (i.e., non-stationary) or com-

Damage scenarios.
plex intrinsic behavior corresponding to the environmental varia-
Scenario Process Intrinsic Damage tions such as the bi-linear behavior between temperature and
condition system natural frequencies [9,10], because a reference PC model from
Location and severity Occurrence
behavior
insufficient normal data set is no longer representative of the cur-
S#1a Stationary Quasi- No damage for false-alarm – rent behavior of a structural system. In such a situation, it is desir-
linear testing
S#1b 10% Reduction in stiffness 300th
able that the reference PC model is updated based on a new
of 10th and 11st elements observation to adapt the current behavior of the structural system.
S#2a Non- Quasi- No damage for false-alarm –
In order to settle the limitation of CPCA, adaptive PCA (APCA)
stationary linear testing has been developed mainly in the field of process monitoring
S#2b 10% Reduction in stiffness 700th [15–18]. The main difference between APCA and CPCA is to update
of 10th and 11st elements the reference PC model which represents the current system
S#3a Non- Bi-linear No damage for false-alarm – behavior by using the adaptive reference data set. APCA can be dis-
stationary testing tinguished into the recursive PCA (RPCA) and the moving window
S#3b 10% Reduction in stiffness 700th
PCA (MWPCA). RPCA is a recursive technique to update the refer-
of 10th and 11st elements
ence model for every new sample [15]. RPCA includes older sam-
ples that become increasingly unrepresentative of the current
data from a damaged state or outlier in the training data set, it may system behavior. For addressing this drawback, a forgetting factor
diagnose the damaged state as an undamaged state. is introduced to reduce the effect of older samples on the current
The conventional PCA (CPCA) based on the fixed reference system behavior. It is not easy to select this factor without a priori
would lead to numerous false-alarms under the dynamic knowledge. MWPCA has been developed to overcome this

0.99 0.995
0.95 0.99
0.9
0.75
0.95
0.5 0.9
Probability
Probability

0.25 0.75

0.1 0.5
0.05
0.25
0.1
0.01 0.05
0.005 0.01
0.005
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4 5 6
-3
Residual x 10 Residual -3
x 10
(a) Extreme value distribution (b) Normal distribution

0.995
0.995 0.99
0.99
0.95
Probability

Probability

0.9
0.95
0.75
0.9
0.5
0.75
0.25
0.5 0.1
0.25 0.05
0.1 0.01
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
-3
Residual x 10 Residual -3
x 10
(c) Exponential distribution (d) Rayleigh distribution
Fig. 9. Probability plots of residuals from initial data set.
216 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

W/O noise With noise [SNR: 60dB]

Freq. #1 (Hz)

Freq. #1 (Hz)
2.87 2.87
2.86 2.86
2.85 2.85
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #2 (Hz)

Freq. #2 (Hz)
11.5 11.5
11.45 11.45
11.4 11.4

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #3 (Hz)

Freq. #3 (Hz)
25.85 25.85
25.8 25.8
25.75 25.75
25.7 25.7
25.65 25.65
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #4 (Hz)

Freq. #4 (Hz)
45.9 45.9
45.8 45.8
45.7 45.7
45.6 45.6
45.5 45.5
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #5 (Hz)

Freq. #5 (Hz)

71.8 71.8
71.6 71.6
71.4 71.4
71.2 71.2
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Sample (N) Sample (N)

Fig. 10. Simulated first 5 natural frequencies (S#1a).

limitation [16]. In the application of civil structural systems,
Posenato et al. [4–6] proposed the damage detection method using
MWPCA and robust regression analysis (RRA) for continuous struc-
tural monitoring. It transforms measurement time series (i.e.,
quasi-static data) into eigenvector time series by the moving win-
dow. When the damage occurs, the mean and covariance matrix
are changed, so that the values of eigenvalues and eigenvectors
are also changed. As the moving window is sliding to all the mea-
surements, the damage can be identified by change of eigenvectors
of the moving window. They used MWPCA to extract
damage-sensitive features for damage detection.
One challenge in implementing MWPCA is to select the optimal
length of the moving window. It should be determined according
to the change rate of the normal process which may not be known
in advance. Instead of the fixed length of the moving window, He
and Yang [17] proposed the variable MWPCA method which
changes the length of the moving window adaptively in accor-
dance with the rate of the system change. Once the optimal length
of the moving window is adaptively selected, the additional chal-
lenging that there is not sufficient observed data may arise at the
initial phase of monitoring. One approach to address this issue is
to combine MWPCA with RPCA [18]. RPCA is used at the initial
phase of the monitoring since this method does not require a speci-
fic number of observed data (i.e., length of moving window). Once
enough observations have been obtained to fill the moving win-
dow of MWPCA, MWPCA is used.
The proposed adaptive reference updating is based on APCA
(i.e., MWPCA) for both accurate description of the normal
condition and damage detection. Contrary to Posenato’s study,
the proposed method is able to adaptively select and reject a
new measurement and update the reference model for data-
normalization and damage detection. It uses the concept of the
moving window which slides along the sequential data stream. If
the new observation is not an outlier, the oldest sample is dis-
carded from the old moving window and then new sample is
added to new moving window. It updates the reference PC model
by calculating the current covariance matrix from a new moving
window as shown in Fig. 2.
The proposed method based on APCA is as follows:
Step 1: Sample the training data set (Xk = [x1 x2, . . ., xk]) to con-
struct the initial PC model and compute the principle compo-
nent (Pk).
Step 2: Compute the residuals (Ek = Xk–XkPkPTk) between the
original data (Xk) and the reconstructed data (XkPkPTk) and esti-
mate the threshold value (Ta,k) with the significant level a
under a goodness-of-fit test for the probability distribution for
residuals. Superscript ‘‘T ’’ denotes the transpose.
Step 3: Collect the new data sample (xk + 1) and calculate the
residual (Ek+1 = xk+1–xk+1PkPTk).
Step 4: If Ta,k < Ek+1, the PC model updating is stopped and an
abnormal alarm is triggered. If Ta,k > Ek+1, update the PC model
based on the new data set (Xk+1 = [x2, x3, . . ., xk+1]) and compute
the principle component (Pk+1), update threshold value (Ta,k+1).
Step 5: Go to Step 3 for evaluation of the new data (Xk+2).
2.3. Comparison between CPCA and APCA
CPCA is reasonable to describe the process under the assump-
tion that a system is stationary and time-invariant, because a PC
model is fixed. On the other hand, APCA has the adaptation ability
of the intrinsic change in system behavior by updating the refer-
ence PC model. Thanks to its adaptive selection for PC model
update, APCA is applicable to both stationary/non-stationary sys-
tems and time-variant/invariant systems. However, the computa-
tional effort of APCA is relatively heavy than that of CPCA, since
 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 217

the iterative updating of the reference PC model is required to
describe the current normal condition as shown in Fig. 3. The com-
putational issue is comprehensively discussed in the Section 4.4.
3. Preliminary works for numerical studies for data-
normalization
To evaluate the performance of the proposed method for dam-
age detection under varying environmental conditions, a numeri-
cal model is constructed by using the Bernoulli–Euler beam
theory. This model is a simply supported beam with 20 elements
as shown in Fig. 4. Its material and geometrical properties are tab-
ulated in Table 1.
The time history of temperature is shown in Fig. 5. To obtain the
realistic time history of temperature, the temperature record of
Seoul in South Korea from June 18th in 2012 (i.e., summer) to
January 24th in 2013 (i.e., winter) is used [19]. Total 889 samples
are obtained under the sampling rate of 6 h. Temperature ranges
from 16 to 35.5 °C.
For the numerical study, the following two main factors are
considered: (1) dynamic environmental variations; and (2) intrin-
sic system behavior on environmental variations. For the dynamic
environmental variations, the temperature history in Fig. 5 is used
to describe the stationary and non-stationary environment. The
to simulate the non-stationary process (Fig. 6(b)). As shown in
Fig. 6(b), the temperature history has the non-stationary property
due to a seasonal variation (i.e., from summer to winter). It is found
that there is a drift of the mean value after the 300th sample, and
the variance of the temperatures after the 680th sample has the
relatively large compared to that of the first 200 samples.
As the intrinsic system behavior on environmental variations,
the temperature dependences to Young’s modulus are assumed
to be quasi-linear and bi-linear as shown in Fig. 7. It is assumed
that there is no temperature gradient, so that the temperature is
distributed uniformly.
The natural frequencies of the first 5 modes are considered as
the feature for damage detection, since the natural frequency is
more stable and accurate to estimate than mode-shapes and sensi-
tive to both damage and environmental conditions (i.e., tempera-
ture). To simulate the environmental effect, it is assumed that
Young’s modulus is dependent on the temperature [9–12]. The fea-
tures are computed as shown in Fig. 8. To account for the presence
of the random or secondary effects (i.e., operational effect), the
simulated features (f i ) are perturbed by adding Gaussian noise
with the level b as shown in the Eq. (1). The signal-to-noise ratios
(SNRs) are adjusted to 100 dB (b ¼ 0, no noise), 80 dB (b ¼ 0:0001,
low noise) and 60 dB (b ¼ 0:001, high noise).
_

first 400 samples are used to simulate the stationary condition f i ¼ f i þ b  RMSðf i Þ  Nð0; 1Þ ð1Þ
(Fig. 6(a)), while the whole samples (i.e., 889 samples) are used

Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA

0.3

0.25
0.25
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

0.2
0.2

0.15 0.15

0.1 0.1

0.05 0.05

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(a) False alarm test of CPCA (S#1a) (b) False alarm test of APCA (S#1a)
Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA
0.7
0.7

0.6
0.6
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

0.5
0.5

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3

0.2 0.2

0.1 0.1

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(c) Damage detection test of CPCA (S#1b) (d) Damage detection test of APCA (S#1b)
(Damage at 300th sample) (Damage at 300th sample)

Fig. 11. Results of numerical study #1 with SNR of 60 dB.

218 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

Freq. #1 (Hz)

Freq. #1 (Hz)
W/O noise With noise [SNR: 60dB]
2.9 2.9

2.85 2.85
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #2 (Hz)

Freq. #2 (Hz)
11.8 11.8

11.6 11.6

11.4 11.4
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #3 (Hz)

Freq. #3 (Hz)
26.4 26.4
26.2 26.2
26 26
25.8 25.8
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #4 (Hz)

Freq. #4 (Hz)
47 47
46.5 46.5
46 46

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #5 (Hz)

Freq. #5 (Hz)

73.5 73.5
73 73
72.5 72.5
72 72
71.5 71.5
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)

Fig. 12. Simulated first 5 natural frequencies (S#2a).

4. Numerical study
A total of three scenarios are constructed based on the two main
factors as follows: (1) quasi-linear behavior under the stationary
environment (S#1); (2) quasi-linear behavior under the
non-stationary environment (S#2); and (3) bi-linear behavior under
the non-stationary environment (S#3). As tabulated in Table 2, each
scenario consists of the false alarm and damage detection tests to
compare the performance of the proposed APCA-based damage
detection method and that of the CPCA-based method.
For brevity and comparison, the first 200 samples (i.e., the 1st to
200th samples) are used as the fixed reference data of CPCA and
the length of the moving window in ACPA. For all the scenarios,
the number of principal components is chosen by the cumulative
percent variance (CPV) method [20]. The predetermined value is
95% of CPV. The Euclidean distance is used as a novelty index for
further numerical studies, since the Mahalanobis distance may
not be appropriate under a non-stationary condition due to the
time-variant covariance matrix of residuals (i.e., CPCA). For the
estimation of the threshold value, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test
(K–S test) is performed to estimate the probability distribution
function (PDF) of residuals. Four PDFs are considered as (1)
Extreme value, (2) Normal, (3) Exponential, and (4) Rayleigh distri-
butions. The one of the probability plots are shown in Fig. 9. It is
observed that Rayleigh distribution properly describes the popula-
tion of the residuals in all the scenario cases. The threshold value is
estimated by the one-sided 99.7% (3r) confidence level.
4.1. Scenario #1: quasi-linear behavior under the stationary
environment
This damage scenario is the simplest one among all the scenar-
ios. For brevity, the results of the numerical study from SNR of
60 dB are illustrated. The other results are tabulated in
Section 4.4. The simulated natural frequencies under the two
SNRs of 100 dB (i.e., no noise) and 60 dB without damage are plot-
ted in Fig. 10. It is clearly observed from the figure that the natural
frequencies of SNR of 60 dB are more dispersed due to the noise
effect.
Fig. 11 shows the results of both the false-alarm and damage
detection tests. The Euclidean distances from CPCA and APCA are
plotted with the threshold value (black dotted line). The fixed refer-
ence of CPCA is described by the green line. The sample beyond the
threshold value is marked with a red circle. Theses notations are also
applied to the following figures such as Figs. 11, 13, 15 and 16. As
shown in Fig. 11, both CPCA-based and APCA-based damage detec-
tion methods are successful to interpret the healthy condition and
identify the damage after the 300th sample. It figures out that both
methods have the similar performance in this case.
4.2. Scenario #2: quasi-linear behavior under the non-stationary
environment
In this scenario case, both methods are investigated under the
dynamic aggressive environmental variations (i.e., non-stationary
condition). The whole samples (i.e., a total of 889) are used to sim-
ulate the non-stationary process as shown in Fig. 12. Similarly to
Section 4.1, the results of the numerical study from SNR of 60 dB
are illustrated.
As shown in Fig. 13(b) and (d), it is clearly observed that the
threshold value is adaptively constructed in the APCA-based dam-
age detection method. The APCA-based method updates the refer-
ence condition by adapting or rejecting the new observation, once
the non-stationary behavior in temperature history appears. The
CPCA-based damage detection method diagnoses the false-alarms
due to the non-stationary condition (i.e., relatively larger variation)
after the 700th sample, while the APCA-based method results in
much less false-alarms.
 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 219

Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA

0.7
0.35
0.6
0.3
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

0.5
0.25

0.4
0.2

0.3
0.15

0.2
0.1

0.1 0.05

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(a) False alarm test of CPCA (S#2a) (b) False alarm test of APCA (S#2a)

Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA

1 1

0.9 0.9
Euclidean distance (E)

0.8
Euclidean distance (E)
0.8

0.7 0.7

0.6 0.6

0.5 0.5

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3

0.2 0.2

0.1 0.1

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(c) Damage detection test of CPCA (S#2b) (d) Damage detection test of APCA (S#2b)
(Damage at 700th sample) (Damage at 700th sample)

Fig. 13. Results of numerical study #2 with SNR of 60 dB.

The CPCA-based damage detection method may identify the
damage by the relatively large deviation of the Euclidean distance
at the 700th sample. However, there are false-alarms around the
680th sample before the damage occurs at the 700th sample.
These false-alarms result in unnecessary expenditure and the cred-
ibility of the damage detection method is getting lacked. On the
other hand, the APCA-based damage detection method successfully
detects the damage with much less false-alarms.
4.3. Scenario #3: bi-linear behavior under the non-stationary
environment
According to the bi-linear behavior as shown in Fig. 7(b), there
are two slopes in the relation between temperature and Young’s
modulus. The simulated frequencies above 0 °C (i.e., the first 200
samples) are used for the description of the normal condition at
the initial phase, so that the initial samples represent the normal
condition above 0 °C partially and both methods are lacked to rep-
resent the behavior below 0 °C. Furthermore, non-stationary envi-
ronment makes more challenging to interpret the healthy
condition and identify the damage. Fig. 14 shows the simulated
natural frequencies. It is observed that the natural frequencies sig-
nificantly increase from the 680th to 870th samples, once the
intrinsic behavior of the system changes.
For the false-alarm test, the CPCA-based damage detection
method generates many false-alarms in both different SNRs. It is
very unreliable to interpret the healthy condition. In contrast to
the CPCA-based method, the APCA-based method properly inter-
prets the normal condition by reflecting the natural change of
the intrinsic system behavior under the non-stationary
environment.
Despite no noise effect (i.e., 100 dB of SNR), the CPCA-based
damage detection method misinterprets the damage (i.e.,
false-alarms) as similar to Fig. 13(c). In real applications, these
false-alarms may be misinterpreted as the damage, since they
are misinterpreted continuously after the 680th sample. In the
SNR of 60 dB, the CPCA-based method does not identify the dam-
age by masking in the false-alarms. On the other hand, the
APCA-based damage detection method is successful to identify
the damage without false-alarms regardless of the SNRs.
4.4. Summary and discussion
To consider the randomness of noise, sensitivity with respect to
the noise ratio is analyzed. Under the three different SNRs (i.e., 60,
80, 100 dB), each scenario is repeated five times. Then, the false
alarm rate is computed as a measure of the performance.
220 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

Freq. #1 (Hz)

Freq. #1 (Hz)
3 3
W/O noise With noise [SNR: 60dB]
2.9 2.9

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #2 (Hz)

Freq. #2 (Hz)
12 12

11.5 11.5

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #3 (Hz)

Freq. #3 (Hz)
26.8 26.8
26.6 26.6
26.4 26.4
26.2 26.2
26 26
25.8 25.8
25.6 25.6
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #4 (Hz)

Freq. #4 (Hz)
48 48
47 47
46 46
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
Freq. #5 (Hz)

Freq. #5 (Hz)

74 74

72 72

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)

Fig. 14. Simulated first 5 natural frequencies (S#3a).

Table 3
False-alarm rate in Scenario #1.

Signal-to-noise ratio Type False-alarm rate from the 201st to 400th samples (%)
1 2 3 4 5 Mean Standard deviation
S#1a: False-alarm test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
APCA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 0.5 0 0 1 0 0.3 0.45
APCA 0.5 0 0 0.5 0 0.2 0.27
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 0.5 0.5 2 1 0.5 0.9 0.65
APCA 0.5 0 2.5 1 0.5 0.9 0.96

False-alarm rate from the 201st300th samples (%)

S#1b: Damage detection test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
APCA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 0.5 0 1 0.5 0 0.4 0.42
APCA 0.33 0 0.67 0.33 0 0.27 0.28
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 0 0 0.5 0 0.5 0.2 0.27
APCA 0 0 0.5 0 0.5 0.2 0.27

At first, the performance of both methods is evaluated under
stationary dynamic environmental variation with the quasi-linear
behavior (S#1). False-alarm rates of S#1a are calculated from the
201st to 400th sample, while false-alarm rates of S#1b are
calculated from the 201st to 300th samples, since both methods
successfully identify the damage state after the 300th samples.
Both methods are successful to interpret the normal condition
and damage detection. According to Table 3, both methods have
a small sensitivity to noise under stationary condition, since
the higher noise ratio does not lead to an increase of false alarm
rate.
Under non-stationary dynamic environmental variation with
the quasi-linear behavior (S#2), false-alarm rates of S#2a are cal-
culated from the 201st to 889th sample and those of S#2b are cal-
culated from the 201st to 700th sample. In the false alarm test
(S#2a), the CPCA-based damage detection method generates many
 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 221

Conventional PCA -3 Adaptive PCA

x 10
0.03
8
Euclidean distance (E) 0.025 7

Euclidean distance (E)

6
0.02
5
0.015
4

0.01 3

2
0.005
1

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(a) Conventional PCA (SNR = 100 dB) (b) Adaptive PCA (SNR = 100 dB)
Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA
2
0.35
1.8

1.6 0.3
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

1.4
0.25
1.2

1 0.2

0.8 0.15
0.6
0.1
0.4

0.2 0.05

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(c) Conventional PCA (SNR = 60 dB) (d) Adaptive PCA (SNR = 60 dB)

Fig. 15. False-alarm test with different SNRs.

false-alarms around the 700th sample due to non-stationary prop- As found in Tables 3–5, the APCA-based damage detection
erties. It means that the fixed reference PC model is not working method is more robust with respect to the noise effect than the
properly in the non-stationary environment, since their basic CPCA-based one. Considering that the noise effect in real applica-
assumption is that a system is stationary and time-invariant. On tions is inevitable to the measurements, the robustness to the
the other hand, the APCA-based method has still relatively small noise effect is important. Based on the previous results, the perfor-
false-alarms than the CPCA-based one. In the damage detection mances of both methods are summarized in Table 6. It is expected
test (S#2b), both methods can detect the damage under SNR that the APCA-based method can apply to various situations (i.e.,
100 dB (i.e., no noise). However, the CPCA-based damage detection similarly to Scenarios #1–3) successfully by obtaining the valid
method generates more false-alarms before damage as shown in data set of the normal condition adaptively.
Fig. 15, as the noise ratio increases. According to Table 4, the The computational effort is an important concern in algorithms.
CPCA-based method is not reliable under the non-stationary envi- The main computational difference between the CPCA-based and
ronment, while the APCA-based method still works successfully APCA-based methods is the iterative update of the reference
regardless of the noise effect. model. The number of iterative update is depending on the number
In the last case, the performance of both methods is evaluated of initial data (i.e., the length of the moving window in APCA) and
under the non-stationary environment with the bi-linear behavior the total number of data. These are used for the parametric study
(S#3). The samples used for false-alarm rates are similar to S#2. to evaluate the computational effort. The computation of each
The APCA-based damage detection method is successful to inter- method has been performed by MATLAB 2014a with the identical
pret the change of the normal condition under the insufficient computer (IntelÒ Core™ i7-950 processor running with 3.06 GHz
description of normal condition at the initial phase (S#3a), while with Window 7 OS). To estimate the average computational time,
the CPCA-based method leads to disastrous results with numerous a total of 30 simulations are performed for each method. The esti-
false alarms. In the damage detection test (S#3b), the CPCA-based mated computing time from this parametric study is shown in
damage detection method are very disappointing to identify the Fig. 17. As seen from the figure, the computational time of the
damage. On the other hand, the APCA-based method is successful APCA-based method (0.41–1.56 s) is much heavier than those of
to detect the damage with small false-alarms. According to the CPCA-based method (0.0027–0.055 s), since the APCA-based
Table 5, the CPCA-based damage detection method is not reliable method has the recursive framework to update the reference PC
under the non-stationary environment, while the APCA-based model. Considering that APCA in this study is based on singular
method still works successfully regardless of the noise effect. value decomposition, its computational time can be significantly
222 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224

Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA

1.2 1.2

1 1
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
600 700

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(a) Conventional PCA (SNR = 100 dB) (b) Adaptive PCA (SNR = 100 dB)
Conventional PCA Adaptive PCA
1.2

2
1
Euclidean distance (E)

Euclidean distance (E)

1.5 0.8

0.6
1

0.4

0.5
0.2

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Sample (N) Sample (N)
(c) Conventional PCA (SNR = 60dB) (d) Adaptive PCA (SNR = 60 dB)
Fig. 16. Damage detection with different SNRs (Scenario #6).

Table 4
False-alarm rate in Scenario #2.

Signal-to-noise ratio Type False-alarm rate from the 201st to 889th samples (%)
1 2 3 4 5 Mean Standard deviation
S#2a: False-alarm test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 14.80 18.43 14.80 15.82 13.64 15.50 1.81
APCA 0.87 0.15 0.29 0.29 0 0.32 0.33
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 11.18 14.66 10.89 22.06 19.01 15.56 4.90
APCA 1.45 0.73 0.29 1.16 0.87 1.57 1.68
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 22.79 28.01 20.46 27.58 24.82 24.73 3.19
APCA 0.73 1.16 1.02 1.16 1.60 1.13 0.32

False-alarm rate from the 201st700th samples (%)

S#2b: Damage detection test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 0.58 1.16 0.73 0.58 1.31 0.87 0.34
APCA 0.77 0.51 1.03 0.29 0.52 0.82 0.33
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 2.47 1.16 1.74 1.02 2.90 1.86 0.82
APCA 1.29 1.29 1.80 0.77 0.26 1.08 0.59
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 3.34 2.61 6.68 7.11 4.93 4.93 1.98
APCA 1.03 1.03 2.32 0.52 0.77 1.13 0.70

reduced by using rank-one modification [15–18]. It is also noted those of the acquisition and modal identification (i.e., feature
that the computational time of both methods is much smaller than extraction).
 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224 223

Table 5
False-alarm rate in Scenario #3.

Signal-to-noise ratio Type False-alarm rate from the 201st to 889th samples (%)
1 2 3 4 5 Mean Standard deviation
S#3a: False-alarm test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 21.05 19.01 18.43 21.77 19.30 19.91 1.42
APCA 2.18 2.18 2.47 1.45 2.62 2.18 0.45
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 19.74 20.03 18.29 20.46 22.93 20.29 1.69
APCA 0.44 1.31 1.02 0.73 1.45 0.99 0.41
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 34.40 32.66 32.95 28.01 35.56 32.71 2.88
APCA 2.33 1.16 2.18 5.67 0.58 2.38 1.97

False-alarm rate from the 201st to 700th samples (%)

S#3b: Damage detection test
SNR 100 dB (No noise) CPCA 1.31 2.32 2.03 2.47 1.60 1.94 0.49
APCA 0.77 1.8 1.29 1.03 0.77 1.13 0.43
SNR 80 dB (Low noise) CPCA 2.61 2.18 1.88 2.47 3.19 2.47 0.49
APCA 1.55 0.77 1.03 1.29 0.77 1.08 0.34
SNR 60 dB (High noise) CPCA 9.14 9.58 11.76 9.29 8.56 9.67 1.23
APCA 2.84 2.06 3.61 2.06 2.06 2.53 0.69

Table 6
Summary of numerical simulations.

False-alarm Stationary, quasi-linear Non-stationary, quasi-linear Non-stationary, bi-linear

S#1a S#2a S#3a
SNR 100 dB CPCA No false-alarms False-alarms False-alarms
APCA No false-alarms No false-alarms No false-alarms
SNR 80 dB CPCA No false-alarms False-alarms False-alarms
APCA No false-alarms No false-alarms No false-alarms
SNR 60 dB CPCA No false-alarms False-alarms False-alarms
APCA No false-alarms No false-alarms No false-alarms

Damage detection S#1b S#2b S#3b

SNR 100 dB CPCA Distinct detection Distinct detection Faint detection
APCA Distinct detection Distinct detection Distinct detection
SNR 80 dB CPCA Distinct detection Distinct detection Faint detection
APCA Distinct detection Distinct detection Distinct detection
SNR 60 dB CPCA Distinct detection Faint detection Undetected
APCA Distinct detection Distinct detection Distinct detection

environmental conditions. The proposed method has the ability

of adaptive learning to capture the intrinsic behavior of the normal
condition, while the conventional approach (i.e., the CPCA-based
damage detection method) does not have. Based on the numerical
studies, it is demonstrated that the proposed APCA-based damage
detection method is able to capture the intrinsic characteristics of
the normal condition and detect the damage with much less false
alarms. The false alarm rates of the APCA-based method do not
increase, even though the noise ratio increases. From the perspec-
tive of the computational effort, the APCA-based method is much
heavier than the CPCA-based method due to its iterative update
of the reference model. However, this is negligible in the real appli-
cation, because the computational time of the APCA-based method
is much smaller than the time for feature extraction (i.e., modal
(a) CPCA (b) APCA identification). Therefore, the proposed method can be effectively
used for detecting the structural damage in practice.
Fig. 17. Comparison of computational efforts required by both methods.

5. Conclusions
In this paper, the APCA-based damage detection method is
proposed for identifying structural damage under varying
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by a Grant (13SCIPA01)
from Smart Civil Infrastructure Research Program funded by
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) of Korea
224 S.-S. Jin et al. / Computers and Structures 158 (2015) 211–224
government and Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology
Advancement (KAIA) and the New & Renewable Energy of the
Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning
(KETEP) Grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of
Knowledge Economy (No. 20123030020090).
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