Parametric identification of plane frames using static strains

A method for identifying the stiffness of a plane frame is developed in this paper. The finite element method is used to derive the equilibrium equation of the frame. The identification problem is then formulated as an optimization program in which the error norm of the equilibrium equation is minimized. The proposed method has four important features: (i) the method is practicable because it only requires strain measurement in static tests; (ii) the solution is unique and global minimal; (iii) the method can be applied to a whole frame as well as a subframe; (iv) the method is well-posed. The identifiability of the inverse problem is also studied in depth in the paper.