Nonlinear characteristics in the dynamic behaviors of civil structures degrade the performance of damage detection of the linear theory based traditional time- and frequency-domain methods. To overcome this challenge, this paper proposes a damage detection approach for nonlinear structures based on Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD). In this approach, the measured dynamic responses from nonlinear structures under earthquake excitations are adaptively decomposed into a finite number of monocomponents by using VMD. Each decomposed mono-component represents an amplitude modulated and frequency modulated (AMFM) signal with a limited frequency bandwidth. Hilbert transform is then employed to identify the instantaneous modal parameters of the decomposed monomodes, including instantaneous frequencies and mode shapes. Based on the identified modal parameters from the decomposed structural dynamic responses, two damage indices are defined to identify the location and severity of structural damage, respectively. To validate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed approach, a nonlinear seven-storey shear building model with four different damage cases under earthquake excitations is used in the numerical studies. In experimental verifications, data from shake table tests on a 12-storey scaled reinforced concrete frame structure with different earthquake excitations are analyzed with the proposed approach. The results in both numerical studies and experimental validations demonstrate that the proposed approach can be successfully applied for nonlinear structural damage identification.
