Locate Damage based on Change in Structural Shape for Civil Space Structures

Recent years have witnessed a number of collapses of civil space structures, which have severely jeopardized the safety of the general public. Therefore, it is imperative to propose an approach that can localize damage to exact members at an early stage for space structures. Then, the obtained damage location results can be used by the maintenance/repair crew for taking timely actions. For most space structures, the member configuration possesses a regular pattern. For this type of structure, before damage occurs, the regular pattern in the member configuration is maintained. After damage occurs, the regular pattern around the damaged member will be destroyed. In this study, the proposed approach to locate damage is based on the change in the status of regularity of member configuration. Herein the difference in an angle of the triangular shape in the related region of a space structure is used to indicate whether the regularity of member configuration is maintained. To validate the proposed approach, a reticulated shell space structure will be investigated.