PARAMETER-ESTIMATION OF STRUCTURES FROM STATIC RESPONSE .2. NUMERICAL-SIMULATION STUDIES

The behavior is studied of a force-error estimator and a displacement- error estimator using Monte Carlo simulation and a bowstring truss as the model problem. The most important factors governing the performanc e of any parameter-estimation algorithm are the quality and quantity o f measured data. To assess the performance of the force-error estimato r and the displacement-error estimator, we examine their behavior with respect to the amount of noise in the measurements, the spatial distr ibution of measurements, the number of spatial measurements, the numbe r of load cases, and the character of load cases (specifically, loadin g patterns). in addition to the extensive study of the effects of the physical character of the data and the experiment, we examine the effe cts of different starting values of the unknown parameters used to ini tiate the iteration.