1 Article

2 Real-time diagnosis of structural nonlinear damage based on

3 NARX neural network with dynamic response
4 Yanxin Xu 1,2,3,4, Dongjian Zheng 1,2,3, Chenfei Shao 1,2,3,4*, Sen Zheng 1,2,3, Hao Gu1,2,3 and Huixiang Chen

5 1 State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nan-
6 jing 210024, PR China; xu_yanxin@hhu.edu.cn (Y.X.); zhengdj@hhu.edu.cn (D.Z.);
7 shao_chen_fei@hhu.edu.cn (C.S.); zheng_sen@hhu.edu.cn (S.Z.); ghao@hhu.edu.cn (H.G.)
8 2 College of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210024, PR China;

9 3 National Engineering Research Center of Water Resources Efficient Utilization and Engineering Safety,

10 Hohai University, Nanjing 210024, PR China;

11 4 College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210024, PR China

12 5 College of Agricultural Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 211100, China;

13 chenhuixiang@hhu.edu.cn (H.C.)
14 * Correspondence: shao_chen_fei@hhu.edu.cn

15 Abstract:. In order to improve the applicability of the time series model for diagnosing structural
16 nonlinear damage, this paper proposed a real-time structural damage diagnostic method based on
17 structural dynamic response and a recurrent neural network model. Starting from the linear struc-
18 ture dynamic response transfer rate function, a generalized Auto-Regressive with eXtra inputs (ARX)
19 model expression for the dynamic response under smooth excitation conditions was derived and
20 extended to the case of nonlinear structure damage using a neural nonlinear ARX (NARX) network
21 model. The method of NARX neural network construction and online parameter learning was stud-
22 ied to solve the definiteness of each factor in the network by applying unit input vectors to the model,
23 and to construct diagnostic indices for structural nonlinear damage based on the Marxian distance
24 (MD). Finally, the effectiveness of NARX damage diagnosis with neural network was verified by
25 numerical arithmetic examples of nonlinear damage in four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) systems.
26 The results showed that the NARX neural network can effectively describe the input-output rela-
27 tionship of the structural system under nonlinear damage. For dynamic neural networks, factor de-
28 termination based on unit inputs has higher computational accuracy than that of the conventional
29 method. The well-established MD damage index could effectively characterize the devolution of
30 structural nonlinear damage.

31 Keywords: dynamic response; NARX neural network; nonlinear damage; real-time damage diag-
Citation: To be added by editorial 32 nosis; factor certainty; Marxian distance
staff during production. 33

Academic Editor: Firstname Last-

name
34 1. Introduction
Received: date
35 In continuous operation, civil engineering structures are often confronted with vari-
Revised: date
Accepted: date
36 ous physical problems such as structural aging and local damage due to loads and envi-
Published: date
37 ronmental influences. Under the action of dynamic loading, the construction of the time
38 series model of the structure vibration response and the subsequent analysis of the struc-
39 ture state is an effective health diagnosis method and has been widely used [1-4]. This
40 method could establish a dynamic model of the input-output of the structural system, and
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Submitted for possible open access
41 through the recursive model coefficient estimation method, while creating appropriate
42
publication under the terms and
damage indicators, it can have the effect of monitoring the structural properties in real
43
conditions of the Creative Commons time. The commonly used time series models are Auto-Regressive (AR) [5-7] and Auto-
Attribution (CC BY) 44
license Regressive with eXtra inputs (ARX) [8-10]. To create the AR model, the free vibrational
45
(https://creativecommons.org/license response of the structure has to be used as a database, so first the free vibrational response
s/by/4.0/).

Mathematics 2023, 11, x. https://doi.org/10.3390/xxxxx www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematics

 Mathematics 2023, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 15

46 has to be extracted from the response of the structure [11-12]. The prerequisite for building
47 the ARX model is the ability to obtain an accurate load excitation, such as artificially ap-
48 plied load excitation, measurement of structure site acceleration, etc. These two conditions
49 further limit to the time series model’s approach to health diagnosis, which is difficult to
50 apply to situations where the loads are more complex or the free vibration response is
51 difficult to extract.
52 In some damage cases, the dynamic response of the engineering structure exhibits
53 certain nonlinear properties, such as crack propagation and nonlinear stiffness, etc. At this
54 time, a nonlinear time series model should be used to accurately construct the input-out-
55 put model of the structural system. Time series models of nonlinear systems established
56 by analytical formulations are roughly classified into two categories, a general nonlinear
57 model including bilinear regression models, additive nonlinear models and autoregres-
58 sive models of functional coefficients [13-15]. The others are nonlinear volatility models
59 including Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH), random coefficient
60 models and stochastic volatility models [16-18]. Existing nonlinear time series models,
61 whose evolution mechanisms of structures and parameters are usually artificially set ac-
62 cording to specific idealized problems, are difficult to describe various complex structural
63 nonlinear damage problems in a flexible manner. Hence it is difficult to get good modeling
64 results without specifying the mechanism of the system nonlinearity.
65 In the literature, several time series modeling directly using structural dynamic re-
66 sponse have been extensively investigated in an attempt to solve the first problem [19].
67 The model uses only the dynamic response of the structure as the input and output terms
68 of the system to establish the generalized ARX model, without specifying the magnitude
69 of the load excitation, which can avoid possible errors in the extraction of the free vibration
70 response in the construction and improvement the applicability of the time series model
71 damage diagnosis. This work is limited to a modeling approach without consideration of
72 rigorous theoretical evidence and analysis. For complex nonlinear time series, artificial
73 neural networks (ANN) is an effective modeling tool, which is widely used in various
74 fields due to its excellent black box modeling and nonlinear mapping capabilities for non-
75 linear modeling, and has more applications in the field of structural dynamic response
76 analysis [20-22]. Considering the complexity of the neural network model structure, the
77 answer probably lies in further large studies that establish an efficient method for training
78 the network in real-time and construct adequate indicators of the structural state in order
79 to achieve real-time diagnosis of the structural state.
80 In order to address the questions outlined above, this paper first derives the theoret-
81 ical expression of the generalized ARX (GARX) model from the transfer rate function of
82 the structural dynamic response to establish the theoretical basis of the method. Then, the
83 kind of model is extended to the appropriate nonlinear ARX (NARX) neural network
84 model, and recursive estimation methods are applied to achieve online learning of the
85 network model. Immediately afterwards, the structural health status is diagnosed in real
86 time by reasonably establishing the factor certainty of the model and the damage index.
87 Finally, the method is verified to be effective in modeling the relationship between the
88 multi-point response of the structure under the nonlinear damage mode, and has a high
89 modeling efficiency, which can play a better effect of real-time diagnosis of structural non-
90 linear damage through a four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) system example.
91 The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The GARX model of structural
92 dynamic response is presented in Section 2. The NARX neural network model diagnosis
93 method for structural damage is introduced in Section 3. The Martens distance damage
94 index is described in Section 4. An example of four degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) mass-
95 damped-spring system model was analyzed in Section 5. Finally, the conclusions are
96 given in Section 6.
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97 2. GARX Model of Structural Dynamic Response

98 For a structural system under smooth excitation, set its input excitation and structural
99 dynamic response as f (t ) and y(t ) , respectively, and F ( s) and Y ( s) as the Laplace
100 transformations of f (t ) and y(t ) , respectively, whose relationship in the s-domain can
101 be expressed as:
102 Y (s)  H (s)F (s) (1)
103 The transfer function matrix H ( s) of the system can be expressed as a matrix man-
104 ifold, i.e.
105 H ( s)  B( s) A( s) (2)
106 where A(s) is a polynomial of order 2n in s; B(s) is a polynomial matrix with each element
107 a polynomial of order 2n-2 in s; n is the number of DOF in the system.
108 Assume that Y p ( s ) and Yq ( s) are Laplace transformations of the DOF p, q power
109 response, respectively, and define their ratios as the transfer rate function of the sys-
110 tem[23]:

 k 1 H pk (s) Fk (s)
Q
Yp (s)
111 t pq ( s )   (3)
 k 1 H qk (s) Fk (s)
Yq ( s ) Q

112 For a smoothly excited system, Fk ( s) in the above equation is a constant and is set
113 to be f k . In the Eq.(3), H pk (s)  B pk (s) Apk (s) , where Apk ( s) is a polynomial of order
114 2n in s; B pk (s) is a polynomial of order 2n-2 in s. Hence the right-hand side of Eq. (3) can
115 be simplified by combining Q loading terms and removing the same denominator to ob-
116 tain the fractional form of the polynomial function on s.

Yp (s) b0  b1s  b2 s 2   b2 n 2 s 2 n  2
117  (4)
Yq ( s ) a0  a1s  a2 s 2   a2 n 2 s 2 n  2

118 If the structural dynamic response sampling time interval is Δ and the Z-transfor-
119 mation of Eq. (4) is performed, the relationship between the p and q dynamic responses of
120 the DOF in the z-domain is obtained as,

(a0  a1 z 1   a2n  2 z 22n )Y p ( z )

121 (5)
 (b0  b1 z 1   b2n  2 z 22 n )Yq ( z )

122 where z  esΔ is the Z-transformation factor; Δ is the sampling time interval.
123 According to the shifting property Z  y (t  a )  z  a y ( z ) of the Z-transform, Eq. (5) is
124 normalized by the Z-1-transform and the first coefficient on the left to obtain the rational
125 difference form in the time domain in terms of the dynamic response of degrees of free-
126 dom p and q as,

i1 ai ytpi   j 0 b j ytq j  et

na nb
127 ytp  (6)

128 where the subscript of y denotes the discrete sampled data series; et is the error term.
129 Eq. (6) is a parameterized model of the system response transfer rate function in the
130 time domain in the steady state, and the coefficients of the model can reflect the real-time
131 state of the system.
132 The acceleration of the structure is the most important dynamic response monitoring
133 variable. It can be shown that when the initial state of the system is zero, the dynamic
134 acceleration response of the system also satisfies Eq. (3), so the difference equation shaped
135 as Eq. (6) can also be set up for the acceleration response. In contrast to the traditional
136 ARX model, the right-hand side of the equals sign of Eq. (6) replaces the original external
137 input term with the system output and is therefore referred to as the GARX model.
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138 3. NARX Neural Network Model Diagnosis Method for Structural Damage
139 The above Eq. (6) is able to describe the change of state of a linear system and is
140 suitable for identifying linear damage to a structure, such as a decrease in the overall stiff-
141 ness of the structure. If there is nonlinear damage to the structure, such as the occurrence
142 and expansion of structural cracks, the structure will produce a significant nonlinear re-
143 sponse at that time. Then the relationship between the two positions (DOF) p and q, the
144 dynamic response satisfies the nonlinear relationship, i.e.
ytp  f [ ytp1 , ytp2 , , ytp n ,
p
145 (7)
ytq1 , ytq 2 , , ytq n ]  et
q

146 where ytp and ytq are the responses of the structural system at positions p and q (DOF)
147 at moment t; f  is a function of the nonlinear relationship between ytp and ytq ; n p
148 and nq are the corresponding delay times.
149 At this point it is difficult to express f  in terms of explicit functions. Considering
150 that artificial neural networks have extremely strong nonlinear mapping, self-organized
151 learning, and black-box modeling capabilities without requiring any specific nonlinear
152 mechanism [24], this section uses neural network techniques to model the nonlinear dy-
153 namic response of the structure to model.

154 3.1. NARX Neural Network Model

155 Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is a class of artificial neural network connection
156 structures with delayed feedback, capable of processing input and output signals of time-
157 varying systems through transient operations [25]. Among them, the Jordan network is a
158 typical recurrent neural network that provides time-delayed feedback on the model's out-
159 put. Suppose a single-input-single-output Jordan network with both input and output de-
160 lays of order three, i.e., uk , uk 1 , uk 2 , yk , yk 1, yk 2  . The hidden layer contains three
161 neurons and the output is yk 1 , and its network structure is shown in Figure 1. It is known
162 that this form of network fits well with the structural properties of the system described
163 in Eq. (7), and this Jordan network is called NARX network [26].

164

165 Figure 1. Jordan({3,3},3,1) network structure diagram.

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166 Assuming that the NARX network of the SISO system has a and order delay
167 for the input signal and the output feedback signal in the input layer, s neu-
168 rons in the hidden layer and 1 neuron in the output layer, the network can be described
169 as follows [26].
170 The implied layer neuron outputs is

171 hti  g (W U  Ut  W R  Rt ) i  1, ,s (8)

172 The network output is

173 Ot  f (W H  Ht ) (9)
174 where g and f are the activation functions of the neurons in the hidden and output layers,
respectively; g using the tanh function; f using the linear function; U t  [ut 1 , ut  2 , , ut na ]
175 T

and Rt  [Ot 1 , Ot  2 , , Ot  nb ] denote the na  1 dimensional input vector and the nb  1

176 T

177 dimensional feedback vector of the network, respectively. Ht  [ht1, ht2 , , hts ]T is the s  1
178 dimensional output vector of the implied layer neuron; W U is the s  na dimensional
179 weight matrix from the input signal neurons to the hidden layer neurons; W R is the
180 s  nb dimensional weight matrix from the feedback signal neuron to the hidden layer
181 neuron; W H is the 1  s dimensional weight vector from the implicit layer neuron to the
182 output layer neuron.

183 3.2. WRLS-Based Neural Network Online Learning Algorithm

184 In order to meet the requirements for real-time modeling of time-varying nonlinear
185 systems, this paper learns the weighting coefficients of recurrent neural networks online
186 by means of the weighted recursive least squares algorithm weighted recursive least
187 squares (WRLS) [27]. To improve the training efficiency, the feedback connection from the
188 model output to the input is separated and the network is learned in the form of a feed-
189 forward network. In this case, the actual system output is used as the feedback term at the
190 input of the network instead of the model output.
191 For the L-layer feedforward neural network, each neuron contains both linear input
192 and nonlinear output components. At moment k, for the i-th neuron in layer l, its linear
193 input component and its nonlinear output are,

 j 1 wij(l ) y(jl 1) (k )

Nl 1
xi(l ) (k ) 
194 (10)

yi(l ) (k )  g (l ) xi(l ) (k ) 
195 where is the number of neurons in layer l-1, which is also the number of inputs to
196 each neuron in layer l; g (l )   is the nonlinear activation function of the l-th layer neuron.
197 To improve the problem of reduced recognition sensitivity due to "data saturation",
198 the output indicator function with forgetting factor for samples in the time series [1, 2,...,
199 n] is established as follows:

 k 1  nk E (k )
1 n
J ( n) 
2
200 (11)
 k 1 
1
 nk
n N L ( L )2
= e (k )
2 i 1 i

201 where 0    1 is the forgetting factor; N L is the total number of neurons in the output
202 layer of the neural network; ei( L ) (k ) is the output error of the linear input part of the ith
203 neuron of the output layer, i.e.
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204 ei( L ) (k )  ri( L ) (k )  xi( L) (k ) (12)

205 ri( L ) (k ) is the desired input to the output layer of the neural network, denoted as

d 
1
206 ri( L ) (k )  gi( L ) ( L)
i (k ) (13)

207 where di( L ) (k ) is the desired output of the neural network. The activation function of the
208 output layer of the neural network can be taken as a linear function g ( L ) ( x)  x , and then
209 Then r ( L ) (k ) is the desired output of the entire neural network.
210 To find the matrix of weights W that minimizes J (n) , let J (n)  0 , then for the
Wˆ (n)
211 output layer there exist,
J (n) ei( L ) (k ) xi( L ) (k )
nk

n
212    ei
( L)
( k )   =0 (14)
k 1
Wˆ i( L ) (n) xi( L ) (k ) Wˆ i( L ) (k )
213 For the hidden layer l ( 1  l  L  1 ), there exist,

J (n)  E (k ) x(jl 1) (k ) y (jl ) (k ) xi(l ) (k ) 

 k 1  nk   
n Nl 1
214     =0 (15)
Wˆ (l ) (n)
i


j 1
x(jl 1) (k ) yi(l ) (k ) xi(l ) (k ) Wˆ i(l ) (k ) 

215 Denote by  i(l ) (k )  ri(l ) (k )  xi(l ) (k ) the error of the output layer error, which is prop-
216 agated back to the linear input part of the hidden layer, then

 j 1  (jl 1) (k ) w(jil 1) (k )  gi  xi(l ) (k ) 

Nl 1
217  i(l ) (k )  (16)

Let P (l 1) (k )  [θ (l 1) (k )  θ (l 1) (k )]1 , the weighted recursive formula of the weighting
T
218
219 coefficient matrix can be deduced by combining Eq. (14) and Eq. (15)as follows:

 (l 1) P (l 1) ( k  1)  Y (l 1) ( k )

K (k ) 
  Y (l 1) ( k )  P (l 1) ( k  1)  Y (l 1) ( k )
T



 (l 1)
( k )   I  K (l 1) ( k )  Y (l 1) ( k )  P (l 1) (k  1)
1 T

220 P (17)
  
 (l )
( k )   ri(l ) ( k )  Y (l 1) ( k )  W i ( k  1) 
(l ) ( l 1) (l ) T

W i ( k )  W i ( k  1)  K  


where: θ ( L 1) (k )    n1Y ( L1) (1),  n2 Y ( L1) (2), ,  nk Y ( L 1) (k )  is a N L 1  k dimen-
T
221
   
T
222 sional matrix; Y ( L 1)
(k )   y ( L 1) , y ( L 1) , ( L 1) 
, yN is a N L1  1 dimensional vector repre-
 1 2 L 1 

T
223 senting the output vector of the neurons in the L-1 layer; Wi( L) (k )   wi(1L) , wi(2L) , , wiN
( L)  is
 L 1 
224 an N L1  1 dimensional vector that represents the vector of weights associated with the
225 i-th neuron in the output layer for the L-1 layer neurons;
Ri( L) (k )    n 1 ri( L) (1),  n 2 ri( L) (2), ,  n k ri( L) (k )  is an 1  k dimensional vector.
T
226
 
227 In summary, the steps of weighted recursive training of neural networks are as fol-
228 lows:
229 (1) Initialize the network parameter values, set the initial value of each layer weight
230 in the range of [-1,1] arbitrarily, and generally make P (l1) (0)  (103 106 ) I .
231 (2) k=1, marking the k-th recursion.
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232 (3) The neuron output states xi(l ) (k ) and yi(l ) (k ) for each layer of the network are
l L l L
233 calculated from Eq. (10) .
234 (4) Calculate the input error signal ei(l ) (k ) of the output layer according to Eq. (12).
l L

235 (5) Calculate K (l 1) (k ) and P (l 1) (k ) by Eq. (17).

lL l L

236 (6) The weight Wˆi(l ) (k ) , i  [1, Nl ] of the output layer is updated by Eq. (17).
l L
237 (7) Using the updated output layer weights, the output error is propagated back to
238 the input portion of the previous hidden layer by Eq. (16) for  i(l ) (k ) . The expected
l  L 1
239 input ri(l ) (k ) for the i-th neuron of the previous hidden layer is then calculated by Eq.
l  L 1
240 (13).
241 (8) Repeat steps (3) to (7) to update the weight (l  L  1, ,1) of the l-th layer.
242 (9) Let k = k+1, return to step (2), and start the training for the next sample.

243 3.3. Calculation of Factor Certainty of Neural Network Models

244 Similar to the coefficients of the linear time series model, the influence of each factor
245 on the system output in the neural network model is reflected by the determinism of the
246 factors. At present, the factor certainty is mainly calculated using a weight propagation-
247 based method, in which the value of each input is calculated backwards from the output
248 layer to the input layer when there is a unit amount of change on the output side of the
249 model, and this is used as the certainty of the factor [28]. Since the metrics of this method
250 are obtained entirely from the weighting coefficients of the model by algebraic operations
251 without considering the nonlinear mapping ability of the neurons, this leads to a reduc-
252 tion in the accuracy of the dynamic system's factor determination parameters and is not
253 applicable to dynamically changing neural networks under time-varying systems.
254 In this paper, a method for calculating factor determinacy based on unit input was
255 proposed. A unit change is applied to each factor of the model input, i.e., unit input, and
256 the final model output signal is used as the certainty of the factor by forward propagation
257 of the network.
258 Taking neuron i in the input layer as an example, when the input signal is ,
259 the output of neuron j in the hidden layer is

260 yij(2)  g ( wij(1)  xi(1) )  g ( wij(1) ), j  1, 2, , N (2) (18)

261 Considering the case of only one neuron of the output layer, the output corresponds
262 to xi(1)  1 is
 (1) 
 j 1 w(2)
N ( 2)
263 yi(3)  f  j g ( wij )  (19)
 
264 At this point, yi(3) can be used as the factor determination of the input layer neuron
265 i. From Eq. (19), the unit input-based factor certainty covers the network structure, the
266 neuron weights and the nonlinear mapping ability of the neurons. It integrally reflects the
267 degree of influence of factors in the network model and is able to adapt to dynamically
268 changing neural networks under time-varying systems.

269 4. Mahalanobis Distance (MD) Damage Index

270 The change in the model coefficients reflects the change in the state of the system, so
271 the damage index is often set by the coefficients of the model to monitor the health of the
272 structure in real time, such as constructing an algebraic combination of the normalized
273 coefficients of the first few orders and defining the multidimensional spatial distance of
274 all coefficients [29].
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275 Considering that the sensitivity of each order coefficient of the model to structural
276 damage is different, the scales of each order coefficient expressing the damage are incon-
277 sistent and show some correlation. MD, proposed by Indian statistician P.C. Mahalanobis,
278 is an efficient way to calculate the similarity between two sample sets of positional pa-
279 rameters and is commonly used in multivariate analysis to distinguish the distribution of
280 two series [30]. In this paper, the damage index of the structure is obtained by using the
281 MD of the model coefficients, which can cope with the lack of non-independent homoge-
282 neous distribution between dimensions in the high-dimensional distribution data.
283 If the covariance matrix Σ of a multidimensional random variable is known, the
284 MD distance between two data points x and y is,

285 DM ( x, y )  ( x  y )T Σ 1 ( x  y ) (20)

286 Figure 2 shows the sample mean of a two-dimensional random vector located at the
287 origin of the coordinates. In Figure 2(a), it is easy to determine whether test samples A
288 and B represent system anomalies based on the distribution characteristics of the original
289 sample set. For Figure 2(b), when Euclidean distance (ED) is used as the evaluation index,
290 the ED index cannot correctly measure whether the test points are abnormal if the scales
291 of the dimensions of the samples are inconsistent or non-independently and identically
292 distributed.

(a) (b) (c)

293 Figure 2 Distance index of abnormal test samples. (a) ED can determine abnormalities; (b) ED non-
294 judgmental anomaly; (c) MD can determine abnormalities.

295 The MD is an improvement of the ED, and its corrective effect is equivalent to rotat-
296 ing and scaling the sample set to eliminate the influence of correlation and scale incon-
297 sistency among dimensions, so that each dimension satisfies the independent homogene-
298 ous distribution, and thus effectively discriminates whether the test point is anomalous or
299 not, as shown in Figure 2(c).
300 The factor certainty of the NARX model for the dynamic response of the plant struc-
301 ture at any moment can be analyzed with respect to its MD at the initial state to diagnose
302 whether the structural system is abnormal. The damage diagnosis index D of the structure
303 in this paper is defined as

DM ( yd , yh ) ( yd  yh )T Σ h1 ( yd  yh )
304 D  (21)
DM ( yh , μh ) ( yh  μh )T Σ h1 ( yh  μh )

305 where and are the mean vector of model coefficients in the initial state (healthy
306 state) and the covariance matrix of each model coefficient; and are the model co-
307 efficient vectors for the damage state and the initial state of the structure, respectively.
308 The meaning of this damage diagnosis index is the ratio of the MD of the model co-
309 efficient from the damage condition to the baseline condition to the MD of the baseline
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310 condition of the model coefficient with its geometric center, which is a standardized meas-
311 ure of the change in MD due to structural damage.

312 5. Example Analysis

313 In this section, a 4-DOF spring-damped-mass system model is used as an example to
314 create a NARX neural network model for the validation of the structural damage diagno-
315 sis method by simulating the nonlinear damage of the system based on the structural dy-
316 namic response under vibration loading.

317 5.1. Load Conditions And Damage Simulation

318 The 4-DOF system studied in this section is shown in Figure 3. A steady white noise
319 excitation of 30 s duration is applied to the system, and the sampling frequency is 100 Hz.

F1 F2
k1 k2 k3 k4

m1 m2 m3 m4
c1 c2 c3 c4
320

321 Figure 3. 4-DOF spring-damped-mass system.

322 When considering the nonlinear damage of the spring, it is assumed that the spring
323 stiffness at each moment is related to its state of deformation and the spring conforms to
324 the softening stiffness model when it is in tension and the fixed stiffness model when it is
325 in compression. Let the spring stiffness between m3 and m4 produce a nonlinear
326 change in stiffness at the 10th and 20th s to simulate the development of nonlinear damage
327 to the system, with a constant stiffness of 1000 N/m for the other springs. The nonlinear
328 stiffness is expressed as,

329 (22)

330 where is the deformation of the spring . Greater than 0 means the spring is length-
331 ened and less than 0 means the spring is shortened. The injury development process is
332 modeled by changing in . at different time periods is defined as follows:

333 (23)

334 According to Eqs. (22) and (23), the relationship between the internal force and the
335 deformation of the spring is shown in Figure 4.
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336

337 Figure 4. Schematic diagram of the relationship between spring force F and deformation d34.

338 The acceleration response of m3 and m4 is obtained by the dynamic response analysis
339 as shown in Figure 5, and the corresponding change process is shown in Figure 6.

(a) (b)
340 Figure 5. Acceleration response in nonlinear damage mode. (a) m3; (b) m4.

341

342 Figure 6. Process of over time.

343 5.2. Damage Diagnosis Model

344 To verify the effectiveness of the NARX neural network model for diagnosing struc-
345 tural damage in nonlinear damage, a generalized ARX model and a NARX neural network
346 model for diagnosing structural damage were developed.
347 5.2.1. Generalized ARX model diagnosis
348 The acceleration responses of m3 and m4 in 0–5 s were used as input and output, re-
349 spectively, to first build the generalized ARX model and the model order with the smallest
350 error was obtained as ARX(10,10) based on the AIC criterion. Taking the autoregressive
 Mathematics 2023, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 11 of 15

351 term and the input term of this model as an example, the coefficient change pro-
352 cess of the factors is shown in Figure 7. By combining all the autoregressive terms and the
353 factor coefficients of the input terms, the process of changing in the diagnostic index of
354 martingale distance injury was obtained according to Eq. (21) as shown in Figure 8. It is
355 known that the damage diagnosis index based on a linear model cannot identify the
356 change in the nonlinear system state.

(a) (b)
357 Figure 7. Model coefficients of linear model for nonlinear sequence. (a) Coefficient a1; (b) Coefficient
358 b 1.

359

360 Figure 8. The recognition effect on nonlinear damage with linear model.

361 5.2.2. NARX model diagnosis

362 For the nonlinear modeling of the power response, it is first necessary to determine
363 a reasonable order of the model. The response data from 0 to 8 s is used as the training set,
364 and the conventional BP algorithm is utilized to train the NARX network. The response
365 data from 8 to 10 s is taken as the prediction set, and the optimal order of the model is
366 obtained as NARX(8,8) based on the AIC criterion. The initial weight coefficients are ran-
367 domized and the WRLS algorithm is used to recursively estimate the network weight co-
368 efficients, and the corresponding process of network output error variation with data up-
369 date is shown in Figure 9.

370

371 Figure 9. The prediction error process of the NARX model under WRLS recursion.
 Mathematics 2023, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 15

372 For the NARX network under WRLS-based recursive learning, the next step is to cal-
373 culate the deterministic index of each factor. Taking the feedback term factor as
374 an example, the factor determinacy based on the weight propagation and unit input is
375 calculated separately, as shown in Figure 10. The comparison shows that both unit-input
376 determinism and back propagation determinism can achieve the indication of a system
377 state change, while the unit-input determinism index is more accurate and sensitive to
378 damage changes. Based on the unit input determination of all input end factors, the dam-
379 age diagnosis indices are determined by the MD and the ED method, respectively, as
380 shown in Figure 11. It is known that the damage diagnosis index obtained by the MD has
381 a higher sensitivity to the nonlinear damage of the system.

(a)

(b)

(c)
382 Figure 10. Factor certainty of the two methods. (a) Feedback term factor y1; (b) Feedback term factor
383 y2; (c) Feedback term factor y3.
 Mathematics 2023, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 13 of 15

384

385 Figure 11. Nonlinear system damage index based on MD.

386 From the above, it can be seen that the linear time series model can effectively model
387 the linear system, and the coefficients of the model can reflect the changes in the system
388 state, so that the development of the system damage can be better monitored by setting
389 appropriate damage diagnosis indices. As for the nonlinear system, the linear model is
390 not sufficient to represent the complex mapping relationship within the system, resulting
391 in poor stability of the model coefficients for effective system damage monitoring. By us-
392 ing the NARX nonlinear neural network model, the ideal nonlinear system damage diag-
393 nosis can be obtained.

394 6. Conclusions
395 Based on the dynamic acceleration response of the structure, this paper derived the
396 nature of the time series model of the dynamic response from the transmission rate func-
397 tion, and proposed a real-time modeling method of the acceleration response using a re-
398 current neural network to identify nonlinear time-different damage to engineering struc-
399 tures. The certainty of each factor was solved by applying unit inputs to the model, and
400 the nonlinear damage index of the structure was constructed using the MD index, and
401 finally the above nonlinear damage identification method was verified by the arithmetic
402 example of a 4-DOF system. The main conclusions are as follows:
403 (1) For linear structural systems under stationary excitation, the GARX model is able
404 to accurately model the relationship between the dynamic responses. When there is non-
405 linearity in the structural system, the NARX neural network model can achieve better
406 modeling effect and realize the real-time training of the model by the WRLS.
407 (2) The unit input-based factor determinacy calculation method proposed in this pa-
408 per covers the network structure, neuron weights, and neuron nonlinear mapping ability,
409 which comprehensively reflects the degree of influence of factors in the network model.
410 Simultaneously, this method has higher computational accuracy than the traditional dy-
411 namic neural factor determination methods networks under time-varying systems.
412 (3) Due to the correlation of the coefficients of each factor of the dynamic response
413 time series model, the MD index can better characterize the changes in the whole system
414 properties and has higher sensitivity to the development of the engineering structural
415 damage.
416 This paper proposed a real-time modeling and damage diagnosis method for struc-
417 tural nonlinear vibration under smooth excitation. Further improvements are expected to
418 result in an improved understanding of structural damage identification under more com-
419 plex load excitation conditions, such as engineering structures under non-smooth excita-
420 tion and moving loads.

421 Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Y.X., D.Z. and C.S.; methodology, Y.X. and H.C.; soft-
422 ware, Y.X. and C.S.; validation, D.Z., S.Z. and H.G.; formal analysis, Y.X.; investigation, S.Z. and
 Mathematics 2023, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 14 of 15

423 H.G.; resources, Y.X., D.Z., C.S. and H.C.; data curation, Y.X. and C.S.; writing—original draft prep-
424 aration, Y.X.; writing—review and editing, D.Z., C.S., H.G. and H.C.; visualization, C.S. and S.Z.;
425 supervision, D.Z. and H.G.; funding acquisition, D.Z., C.S. and H.G.
426 Funding: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52209159,
427 52179128, U2243223), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (B220201042),
428 National Key R&D Program (2018YFC1508603), Water Conservancy Science and Technology Project
429 of Jiangsu(2022024), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M701044), Jiangsu Young Science
430 and Technological Talents Support Project TJ-2022-076.
431 Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.

432 Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.

433 Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
434 Acknowledgments: The support of Hohai University, China is also gratefully acknowledged.
435 Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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