Structural damage detection method based on random forests and data fusion

A structural damage detection method by integrating data fusion and random forests was proposed. The original acceleration signals were translated into energy features by wavelet packet decomposition. Then the processed energy features were fused into new energy features by data fusion. This can further enlarge the differences among all types of damages. Finally, random forests as an effective classifier was used to detect the multiclass damage. Numerical study on the benchmark model and an eight-storey steel shear frame structure model was carried out to validate the accuracy of the proposed damage detection method. The experiment results indicate that the damage detection method based on random forests and data fusion can improve damage detection accuracy in comparison with random forests alone, support vector machine alone, and support vector machine and data fusion techniques. Moreover, the proposed method has significantly better stability than several other methods.