The research to identify and locate the damage to the engineering structure mainly aimed at some simple structure forms before, such as beam and framework. Damage shows changes of local characteristics of the signal, while wavelet analysis can reflect local damage traits of the signal in time domain and frequency domain. For confirming the validity and applicability of structural damage identification methods, wavelet analysis is used to spatial structural damage detection. The wavelet analysis technique provides new ideas and methods of spatial steel structural damage detection. Based on the theory of wavelet singularity detection，with the injury signal of modal strain energy as structural damage index，the mixing of the modal strain energy and wavelet method to identify and locate the damage to the spatial structure is considered. The multiplicity of the bars and nodes can be taken into account, and take the destructive and nondestructive modal strain energy of Kiewitt-type reticulated shell with 40m span as an example of numerical simulation，the original damage signal and the damage signal after wavelet transformation is compared. The location of the declining stiffness identified by the maximum of wavelet coefficients，analyzed as signal by db1 wavelet，and calculate the graph relation between coefficients of the wavelets and the damage to the structure by discrete or continuous wavelet transform, and also check the accuracy degree of this method with every damage case. Finally，the conclusion is drawn that the modal strain energy and wavelet method to identify and locate the damage to the long span reticulated shell is practical, effective and accurate, that the present method as a reliable and practical way can be adopted to detect the single and several locations of damage in structures.
