Data-Driven Reconstruction of Dynamical Forces and Responses through Bayesian Expectation-Maximization and Modal Reduction Methods

This paper presents a new Bayesian approach for estimating input and state in linear structures using response-only measurements. The proposed approach benefits from a modally reduced state-space model, which circumvents the dimensionality of dynamical responses in complex structures through a low-dimensional subspace. It also substitutes unknown physical forces with a set of equivalent modal forces, which is beneficial when the magnitude and location of input forces are unknown. In this work, these forces are characterized through the conventional random walk model and a class of stationary Gaussian processes. Subsequently, an augmented state-space model is constructed to describe modal states and input loads. Based on this model, a Bayesian expectation-maximization (BEM) methodology is developed to identify the input, state, and noise parameters. This noise identification perspective activates uncertainty quantification in joint input-state estimation problems and enables quantifying the degree of confidence in the estimated quantities. When the proposed method is tested using numerical and experimental examples, accurate estimations and reasonable uncertainty bounds are acquired for the dynamical state and input forces. Although the literature reports the superiority of the Gaussian process latent force model over the random walk model without using a unified noise calibration strategy, this study, to our best knowledge, is the first effort to compare and interpret the results on a consistent basis where the noise and input characteristics are all identified from the data through BEM.