Mr. Banan et al., TIME-DOMAIN PARAMETER-ESTIMATION ALGORITHM FOR STRUCTURES .2. NUMERICAL-SIMULATION STUDIES, Journal of engineering mechanics, 121(3), 1995, pp. 435-447
Monte Carlo simulation is used to study the statistical behavior of th
e time-domain parameter estimator presented in the companion paper, us
ing a bridge truss as a model problem. The effects of the estimation t
ime step, the initial parameter values, and the quality and quantity o
f information on the outcome of parameter estimation are investigated.
The paper demonstrates that the time step must be sufficiently small
to control the errors inherent in the numerical integration scheme. bu
t should be large enough to provide new information for the estimator.
As expected for this type of problem, the estimates are biased in the
presence of noise in the measurements. However, for practical amplitu
des of noise, the estimated parameters are sufficiently reliable. The
estimator has the desirable characteristic that, when the noise amplit
ude is sufficiently small, the accuracy of the estimates can be increa
sed by presenting more information to the algorithm.