Original Article

Structural Health Monitoring

1–12

Unsupervised novelty detection–based Ó The Author(s) 2017

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structural damage localization using a DOI: 10.1177/1475921717691260
journals.sagepub.com/home/shm
density peaks-based fast clustering
algorithm

Young-Jin Cha and Zilong Wang

Abstract
Within machine learning, several structural damage detection and localization methods based on clustering and novelty
detection methods have been proposed in the recent years in order to monitor mechanical and civil structures. In order
to train a machine learning model, an unsupervised mode is preferred because it only requires sufficient normal data
from the intact states of a structure for training, and the testing abnormal data from various damage states are generally
quite rare. With an unsupervised training mode, the capability of detecting structural damage mainly depends on the
identification of abnormal data from the testing data. This identification process is termed unsupervised novelty detec-
tion. The premise of unsupervised novelty detection is that a large volume of a normal data set is available first to train a
normal model that is established by machine learning algorithms. Then, the trained normal model can be used to identify
abnormal data from future testing data. In this article, a new structural damage detection and localization method is pro-
posed using a density peaks-based fast clustering algorithm. In order to realize damage detection, the original density
peaks-based fast clustering algorithm is modified to an unsupervised machine learning method by adding training and
testing processes. Furthermore, to improve the performance of the proposed method, the Gaussian kernel function of
radius is introduced to calculate the local density of data points, and a new damage-sensitive feature using a continuous
wavelet transform is also proposed. Damage-sensitive features are extracted from the measured data through sensors
installed on a laboratory-scale steel structure. Extensive experimental studies are carried out under various structural
damage scenarios in order to validate the performance of the proposed method. The proposed density peaks-based fast
clustering method shows satisfactory performance with regard to damage localization under various damage scenarios
as compared to a traditional approach.

Keywords
Unsupervised novelty detection, structural damage localization, abnormal data, density peaks, fast clustering

Introduction pattern recognition methods with the measured data.

Numerous structural health monitoring methods have
been proposed and developed during the last three
decades to detect, locate, and quantify the damages in
mechanical and civil structures. Typically, vibration-
based damage detection methods are one of the most
effective approaches that are used to detect damages in
structures.1 In general, vibration-based damage detec-
tion methods can be broadly classified into physical
model-based approaches and data-based approaches.2
Damage analysis using data-based approaches is
entirely based on the measured data obtained from the
sensors installed on the monitored structures. The
structural damages can be detected, located, and quan-
tified by employing machine learning or statistical
Data-based approaches can also account for uncer-
tainty effects on the structures.3 Besides, data-based
approaches are more frequently selected as quasi real-
time damage detection methods owing to their low
computational cost. These data-based approaches use
machine learning approaches, trained by supervised or
unsupervised modes, to classify data sets into different
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB,
Canada
Corresponding author:
Young-Jin Cha, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Manitoba,
E1-430 EITC, 15 Gillson Street, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V6, Canada.
Email: young.cha@umanitoba.ca
2 Structural Health Monitoring
groups, which are typically the damaged and the intact
groups. Supervised machine learning approaches
require both the normal and the abnormal data from
the ‘‘intact’’ and ‘‘damaged’’ structures to establish a
statistical model in the training process. However, it is
known that the data obtained from various damage
states of real civil structures are commonly quite rare.4
Thus, unsupervised machine learning approaches are
preferred for damage detection because they only
require normal data from the intact structures for
training.5
In recent years, unsupervised machine learning
methods have been widely used for damage detection
and localization. For instance, Yeung and Smith6
applied two unsupervised novelty detection methods
based on artificial neural networks, probabilistic
resource and allocating networks, and Dignet networks
to detect the damage of loosened joints in the bridge
girders using a finite element (FE) model. In this work,
Dignet is an unsupervised learning algorithm that is
used for clustering and data fusion, and it is a self-
organizing neural network that classifies the input data
without supervised training. The experimental results
showed that a satisfactory damage detection rate was
achieved. Roy et al.7 presented a structural damage
detection model based on an unsupervised learning
technique. In this novelty detection approach, a neural-
network-based sparse auto-encoder algorithm was inte-
grated into a statistical outlier analysis method. The
model established by this approach can detect and
locate the damages induced in thin plates. The experi-
mental results showed that the proposed approach can
separate the intact and the damaged data with high
accuracy. However, one drawback of this approach is
that there is no parametric density estimate or extreme
value statistic to train the model to improve the outlier
detection performance. Da Silva et al.8 applied unsu-
pervised clustering methods based on Fuzzy c-means
(FCM) and Gustafson–Kessel (GK) clustering algo-
rithms to establish training models using only data
from the intact structures. These well-trained intact
models were applied to detect the damage in a three-
story bookshelf structure model. The results of damage
detection showed that all the intact cases were categor-
ized better than the damaged cases and that the GK
algorithm performed better than the FCM algorithm
for some damage cases. Oh and Sohn9 proposed an
unsupervised novelty detection model established by a
support vector machine (SVM) incorporated with a
discrete-time prediction. This novel model can detect
the damages in a laboratory-scale mass-spring struc-
tural system. It was shown that the proposed model
performs rather well in detecting structural damage
under the condition of an unknown level of a time-
varying excitation.
Long and Buyukozturk10 also proposed an auto-
mated one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM) to
locate the damage position in a three-story, two-bay
steel structure in the laboratory. The OC-SVM is a
well-known unsupervised machine learning method
that has been widely applied to novelty detection in the
recent years. The experimental results indicated that
while the OC-SVM exhibits high reliability of damage
detection, it is not quite accurate in terms of damage
localization. Khoa et al.11 also applied OC-SVM to
detect damages in a laboratory-scale building structure
and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in practice. The results
of their study showed that the detection accuracy of the
OC-SVM was lower than that of the supervised dam-
age detection method proposed in the article. Nair
et al.12 applied a novelty damage detection method to
detect and locate damages in a four-story, two-bay by
two-bay steel-braced frame structural model. In this
method, the difference in mean values between the data
class formed by the data obtained from damaged struc-
tures and the data class formed by the data obtained
from intact structures indicates the presence of struc-
tural damage. The experimental results showed that the
proposed method is effective in indicating the damaged
floor number in most damage cases. However, the dis-
advantage of this method is that it cannot locate the
damage positions on the located floor. Gul and
Catbas13 proposed a novel detection method to detect,
locate, and quantify the structural damages in a numer-
ical simulated structural system. In this method, an
auto-regressive model with an exogenous input model
was established using only the intact data. Then, the
established intact model was applied to identify the
acquired data from the damaged structure. Santos et
al.14 developed a novel data-driven strategy based on
unsupervised learning algorithms (i.e. principle compo-
nent analysis, symbolic data analysis, and cluster analy-
sis) to detect the damages in a FE bridge model. It was
observed that the proposed strategy could detect minor
damage as small as 1% in stiffness reduction. Toivola
and Hollmén15 used a naive Bayes classifier based on
an unsupervised technique to establish a probabilistic
model for novelty detection and applied this novel
model to detect the damages in a laboratory-scale woo-
den bridge. It was shown that the proposed model
could detect damages in the bridge under most damage
scenarios (DS).
It is found that the numerous unsupervised novelty
detection methods listed in the above literature review
can yield erroneous results for damage detection, par-
ticularly in the case of locating the positions of the
actual structural damages. The objective of this study is
to propose an unsupervised machine learning method
by modification of the original density peaks-based fast
clustering (DPFC) method.16 In order to improve the
Cha and Wang
performance of damage localization, the Gaussian ker-
nel function of radius used to calculate local density of
the data points and a new damage-sensitive feature
using a continuous wavelet transform (CWT) are newly
proposed. The proposed method is validated by con-
ducting extensive experimental studies using a
laboratory-scale steel structure, which is subjected to
various DS.
Damage-sensitive features
Damage-sensitive features are determined from the mea-
sured data using sensors installed on the structure. These
calculated features will be used as data points (i.e. train-
ing data and testing data points) in the damage detection
and localization steps, as explained in section ‘‘Method:
DPFC.’’ The ideal features used for structural damage
detection and localization should be sensitive to the pres-
ence of damage, but insensitive to the operational
and environmental variability in a normal range.17
Acceleration signals in the time series are measured from
the sensors attached to the joints of the steel structure in
the laboratory for the case studies presented in this arti-
cle. Before extracting the features from the raw accelera-
tion signals, it is important to carry out normalization in
order to compare the acceleration histories at the same
sensor locations that may have been obtained under dif-
ferent loading conditions and environmental condi-
tions.12 After normalization, the extracted features from
the same sensor locations in a specific DS exhibit similar
statistical characteristics. The normalized acceleration
signal in time series, a(t), is obtained as follows
aðtÞ  m
 can be explained by the fact that the damage in the case
aðtÞ ¼
s
where aðtÞ is the measured raw acceleration signal from
sensors, and m and s are the mean and standard devia-
aðtÞ, respectively.
tion of 
Crest factor
The first extracted feature of the acceleration signals is the
crest factor, and the measured signals comprise n discrete
quantities. The crest factor of the acceleration data is sen-
sitive to structural damage.1 Its expression is as follows
jajmax
Crestfactor ¼
arms
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
P ffi
where jajmax ¼ max jaðtn Þj; arms ¼ ð1=nÞ n ðaðtn ÞÞ2 .
T-CWT
T-CWT is a new developed damage-sensitive feature
extracted from the signal wavelet after continues wave-
let transformation (CWT). This damage-sensitive
3
feature used in the case study is extracted from the
CWT of the function or acceleration time history, a(t).
Because the acceleration wavelets are localized waves
that span a finite time duration, CWT can represent
the time-varying characteristics of a(t).18 It is mathema-
tically defined as
ð‘  
1 td
W ðs; dÞ ¼ aðtÞ p ffiffi u dt ð3Þ
s s
‘
where W(s, d) is the two-dimensional matrix of wavelet
coefficients, a(t) is the acceleration signal, and uðtÞ is
called the mother wavelet, which is dilated by various
scale parameters s and translated by shifted parameters
d to create a set of basis functions termed daughter
wavelets. For the analysis, Daubechies wavelet is used
as the mother wavelet uðtÞ. To develop the damage-
sensitive features, we first examine the pattern of wave-
let coefficients from the acceleration responses at the
same sensor location before and after damage. Figures 1
and 2 reflect the variations in the wavelet coefficients
computed from the acceleration wavelets at a selected
joint in the following experimental structure before and
after damage, respectively. These figures show that as
the scalar parameter s increases, the peak values of the
wavelet coefficients indicated by amplitude show obvi-
ous differences. Thus, these changes in the peak values
well correlate with the damage status of the structure.
From these two figures, it is found that the peak values
of the amplitude in the scale band of 60–200 decrease
after damage. Furthermore, this band can be considered
as a damage-sensitive band. This decrease after damage
ð1Þ studies leads to loss of high-frequency components of
vibrations due to stiffness reduction.18
Thus, the second damage-sensitive feature can be
extracted as follows
ð2Þ
Figure 1. Peaks in amplitude of the acceleration history at a
joint before damage.
4 Structural Health Monitoring

with a reasonable number of the clusters, which cannot

be detected by traditional distance-only-based unsuper-
vised clustering methods (e.g. K-means and K-
medoids).16,19 The most important advantage of the
DPFCA is that it can identify novelty points, defined
as few scattered points that are far away from the core
region of the clusters, in each of the formed clusters
after classification. This ability is beneficial for devel-
oping an unsupervised damage detection method to
detect structural damage as novelty points. The
DPFCA is modified in Step 1 by introducing a
Gaussian kernel function, and the new Steps 6 and 7
make it as an unsupervised machine learning method
by adding training and testing processes to solve both
the damage detection and localization problems associ-
Figure 2. Peaks in amplitude of the acceleration history at a
joint after damage.
ated with a structure. The steps of the modified
DPFCA are as follows:

Tmaxpeak Step 1. Using the data points from section ‘‘Damage-

T  CWT ¼ ð4Þ sensitive features,’’ the centers of the data point clusters
Tavepeak
must first be identified. In order to do so, local density
where Tmaxpeak is the maximum of the absolute peak ðri Þ and the distance di in Step 2 for each data point
values of the amplitude in the full-scale range, and must be calculated. The local density ðri Þ for each point
Tavepeak is the average of the absolute peak values of i is defined as
the amplitude in the damage-sensitive band. In the case
studies in section ‘‘Case studies,’’ by examining several X  
representative figures, as presented above, we consider ri ¼ @ dij  dc ð5Þ
j
the uniform damage-sensitive band to be 76–200 for
feature extraction, and the full-scale range used for where if d=dij2dc \ 0, @ðdÞ ¼ 1; otherwise, @ðdÞ ¼ 0,
CWT is 1–200. dc is a pre-assumed cut-off distance, and dij is noted as
the distance between points i and j. Figure 3 shows that
the number of points in the red circle is the local density
Method: DPFC of point i in the domain of damage-sensitive features.
In order to detect and localize the damage within a The physical meaning of the local density is the number
structure, the extracted damage-sensitive features are of data points around the specific data point within a
processed into data points via the unsupervised novelty specific radius dc .
detection method, in which a density peaks-based fast In order to improve the performance of the DPFCA
clustering algorithm (DPFCA), which was originally as a structural damage localization method, the
proposed by Rodriguez and Laio16 for large data clus- Gaussian kernel function of radius20 is applied to
ter analysis in 2014, is used. This method was devel-
oped on the basis of two basic assumptions. The first
assumption is that cluster centers are surrounded by
several neighboring points having lower local densities.
The second assumption is that the center points of the
formed clusters are at a relatively large distance from
any other cluster center points. This DPFC method is
modified as an unsupervised machine learning method
to detect and localize structural damage. Details of the
concepts and improvements made through modifica-
tions will be explained in the discussion of the algo-
rithm in the following paragraphs.
The original DPFCA was developed using a combi-
nation of density-based and distance-based techniques;
DPFCA can detect non-spherically distributed clusters Figure 3. Example of local density calculation.
Cha and Wang 5

Figure 4. Example of distance d9 calculation. Figure 5. Identifying cluster density peak points.

calculate the local density. The effect of this function

has been validated through numerous previous damage
detection problems.21–24 The expression of the
Gaussian kernel function of radius for local density is
!
X ðdij  dc Þ2
rj ¼ exp ð6Þ
j
2s2

where 2s2 is the width of the Gaussian kernel, and we

assume it to be equal to 1 for case studies.

Step 2. To find cluster centers, a distance di for each

point i, where di is defined as the shortest distance from
point i to any other points with a higher local density,
is calculated as shown in Figure 4. In this figure, the
points are ranked in the order of their decreasing local
densities. The expression of di is shown as
 
di ¼ min dij ð7Þ
j:rj .ri
We take di ¼ maxðdij Þ for the point with the highest
j
local density.
Step 3. After the calculation of ri and di for each point
from the previous steps, choose the points with a rela-
tively large di and high ri as the cluster density peak
points, as shown in Figure 5. The physical meaning of
the cluster density peak point is the point with the high-
est local density in a cluster. Cluster density peak points
can be observed as the centers of formed clusters, as
shown in Figure 6. This step ensures that the DPFCA
meets the requirements of the previous two assump-
tions simultaneously.
Step 4. After the cluster centers are chosen, assign all
the remaining points to the clusters as their closest
points with a higher local density. The formed clusters
are shown in Figure 7.
Figure 6. Positions of the identified two density peak points.
Step 5. As mentioned previously, the main advantage
of the DPFCA is that it can identify novelty points. In
a cluster, the points with an extreme low local density
can be considered as novelty points because they are
far away from the dense core region of the cluster. In
order to find novelty points in clusters that are well-
formed in Step 4, border regions between the clusters,
as shown by the shadowed areas in Figure 8, should be
identified first. The border region of each cluster is
defined as the set of points assigned to that cluster that
is within the cut-off distance dc from the data points
belonging to the other clusters, as shown in Figure 8.
In order to determine which points are within the bor-
der regions, the mutual distance d of each pair of
points in different clusters, as represented by the black
double-headed arrows in Figure 8, must be calculated
to compare them with the dc defined in Step 1. If the d
is shorter than the dc , then the two points are within
the border regions, and they can be considered as
novelty points. For example, the distance between
point A and point B is shorter than the dc ; therefore,
6 Structural Health Monitoring
Figure 7. Two formed clusters.
Figure 8. Border regions of the two clusters and the points of
highest density within the border regions.
points A and B are novelty points. Because the distance
dAC is also shorter than the dc , point C is also a novelty
point.
Another method for detecting novelty points is the
use of the highest local density ðrb Þ within each border.
The two points with the highest density are designated
by the blue arrows, as shown in Figure 8. The novelty
points of each cluster can be identified by finding the
local density lower than the rb , which are plotted as
black points in Figure 9. The identified novelty points
are also known as halo points; this term is consistent
with what was used in the original DPFCA proposed
by Rodriguez and Laio.16 The clustering procedures of
the original DPFC method have been described in
detail through the above five steps.
Step 6. To modify the original DPFCA to an unsuper-
vised machine learning method designed to detect
Figure 9. Formed clusters with identified novelty points.
damage, the training and testing processes of Steps 6
and 7 are added, respectively. In Step 5, the novelty
points are not found when the value of the cut-off dis-
tance is too small. Thus, the goal of the training pro-
cess in this step is to find appropriate dc to detect the
novelty points within each cluster. Weight w is intro-
duced to update the value of dc , and the updated
cut-off distance is denoted by wdc . Thus, the statistical
clustering model is trained by updating w during this
training process.
Step 7. After the clustering model is well trained in Step
6 and rb for each formed cluster is obtained, the testing
process is conducted. To test new unknown points, the
testing points should be assigned separately to the
model formed through Steps 1–6. During the testing
process, the local density ðrt Þ of the testing point is cal-
culated and the trained points, which have a higher
local density than the rt , are found. Among these, the
point closest to the testing point must be found and the
testing point is then assigned to the cluster that contains
this closest trained point. To determine whether the test-
ing point is a novelty point or not, rt is compared to rb
of the assigned cluster. If the rt is smaller than the rb ,
the testing point is a novelty point.
For structural damage detection, the modified
DPFC method is used as an unsupervised machine
learning method by introducing the training and testing
processes explained in Steps 6 and 7. In the first six
steps of the methodology, the training points from each
sensor location in the intact state of the monitored
structure are used to build an intact statistical model.
During the training process, these intact points can be
classified into several clusters via the DPFC method.
Meanwhile, a local density threshold ðrb Þ for each
formed cluster can be obtained.
In the testing process described in Step 7, the testing
points from an unknown state of the structure are
Cha and Wang
Figure 10. Flowchart of the improved DPFCA as an unsupervised damage detection method.
added into the above well-trained model separately.
The testing points with a lower density than rb of their
assigned clusters can be identified as novelty points.
Due to dissimilarities in the values of damage-sensitive
features, the testing points that are from the damaged
states of the structure should be far away from the core
regions of the intact point clusters in the domain of the
damage-sensitive features. Thus, the testing points iden-
tified as novelty points by the intact model can be
labeled as the damaged points from the structurally
damaged state. The details of the structural damage
detection procedures are explained by the flowchart in
Figure 10. In addition, detailed example, which explains
how damage detection works using the DPFC method,
is provided in section ‘‘Case studies.’’
Experimental setup
Experimental laboratory-scale steel structure
A laboratory-scale steel structure25 is used to demon-
strate the effectiveness of damage localization using the
proposed DPFC method. This experimental setup
7
includes a three-story and two-bay steel structure in the
laboratory, and the bottom of the structure model is
connected to a heavy concrete foundation, as shown in
Figure 11. The dimensions of all the columns are 0.60
m 3 0.0508 m 3 0.0064 m, and the beams in this struc-
ture are the same as the columns. The structural com-
ponents are bolted together by four bolts at the
structural joints, as shown in Figure 12.
DS
In total, 18 tri-axle integrated electronic piezoelectric
(IEPE) acceleration sensors are used to measure the
structural response under excitation. These sensors are
installed on columns and are positioned adjacent to the
joints. Each sensor (joint) generates acceleration signals
in a time series at a sampling rate of 6 kHz and for 3
seconds. A small shaker attached to the top corner of
the structure (close proximity to Joint 18) is used to
excite the structure, which provides a random white
Gaussian noise at a frequency range of 5–350 Hz in the
flexible X-direction, as shown in Figure 11. All the
bolts at the joints are tightened when the structure is in
8 Structural Health Monitoring

reduced section of the column as another type of dam-

age. At each joint location, 60 intact test data sets are
measured by all the tightened bolts, and 10 test data
sets for various DS are also obtained, as show in Table
1.

Case studies
The two damage-sensitive features illustrated in section
‘‘Damage-sensitive features’’ are extracted from the
acceleration signals in the flexible X-direction of the
structure, as shown in Figure 11. Before the application
of the DPFCA, it is essential to rescale the range of the
two extracted features from each joint location to the
same scale from 0 to 1. The general formula is given as

  minðF
F Þ
F¼  Þ  minðF
Þ ð8Þ
maxðF

where F  is an original feature and F is the normalized

Figure 11. Laboratory-scale steel structure with three stories
and two bays.
Figure 12. Connection information of the structural
components and the sensor location at a joint.
the intact state. One type of damage is generated by
loosening the bolts at the structural joints. Moreover,
the column between Joint 2 and Joint 3 is replaced by a
feature. The extracted features are processed into two-
dimensional feature vectors. The first component of the
vector is the crest factor and the second component is
T-CWT. In each test, each sensor or joint location can
generate a feature vector, which can be observed as a
point in a two-dimensional coordinate. Thus, 60 intact
points from the 60 tests for the intact scenario and 10
damage points from each DS are obtained.
Damage detection is carried out on an isolated,
joint-by-joint basis. An intact statistical model is
trained by the modified DPFC method for each joint
using the 60 intact points as training points. The 10
damage points from each DS are taken as the testing
points for novelty detection by the trained intact
model. The results of the damage detection rates at the
structural joints are summarized in Table 2. The mini-
mum density r and the minimum distance d listed in
Table 2 are selected as the thresholds for the local den-
sity and the mutual distance of points, respectively.
The points with higher local density ri and larger
mutual distance di than these two minimum values
listed in Table 2 are selected as the cluster density peak
points as explained in Step 3 in section ‘‘Method:
DPFC.’’dc in Step 1 of section ‘‘Method: DPFC’’ is

Table 1. Damage scenarios with tests.

DS Number of tests Damage types and locations

Intact 1–60 No damage

DS 1 61–70 Two bolts loosened at Joint 1 (minor damage)
DS 2 71–80 Four bolts loosened at Joint 1 (major damage)
DS 3 81–90 Four bolts loosened at Joint 10 (major damage)
DS 4 91–100 Reduced cross-sectional column between Joints 2 and 3

DS: damage scenarios.

Cha and Wang 9

Table 2. Rates of damage detection at the structural joints with the method of DPFC.

Joint Minimum r Minimum d dc w rfp Damage detection rate

DS 1 DS 2 DS 3 DS 4

1 2.5 0.2 0.0550 1.9 0.417 0.8 1.0 0.8 0.8

2 2.5 0.1 0.0285 2.4 0.300 0.3 0.8 0.8 0.7
3 3.0 0.2 0.0343 2.4 0.167 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.9
4 1.5 0.2 0.0661 1.7 0.233 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.4
5 2.5 0.1 0.0462 1.5 0.467 0.3 0.6 0.8 0.6
6 2.5 0.1 0.0183 3.5 0.300 0.7 0.9 0.6 0.6
7 2.5 0.1 0.0326 2.0 0.217 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.5
8 1.0 0.1 0.0278 3.8 0.050 0.1 0.0 0.6 0.4
9 1.0 0.1 0.0056 7.1 0.167 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.5
10 2.7 0.2 0.0341 2.7 0.400 0.8 0.8 0.9 0.7
11 2.0 0.1 0.0523 1.6 0.083 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.3
12 2.0 0.2 0.0390 1.4 0.267 0.6 0.4 0.6 0.7
13 1.5 0.2 0.0547 1.5 0.167 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.2
14 3.0 0.1 0.0656 1.4 0.150 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1
15 2.5 0.1 0.0236 1.7 0.433 0.6 0.9 0.6 0.6
16 1.5 0.2 0.0352 5.1 0.067 0.7 0.3 0.3 0.3
17 2.0 0.2 0.0427 1.5 0.350 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.5
18 1.0 0.1 0.0062 21.7 0.367 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.8

DS: damage scenarios; DPFC: density-peaks-based fast clustering; The italic values in the table indicate the highest rates in the four damage scenarios.

chosen as a value at the position of the highest 2% of

the entire set of mutual distances dij . w is the weight of
dc , which is explained in Step 6 in section ‘‘Method:
DPFC.’’ The false-positive rate rfp is the ratio of the
number of identified halo points (i.e. novelty points) to
the number of intact training points. The damage
detection rate at each joint is calculated by the number
of identified novelty (damage) points divided by the
number of testing damage points in each DS. For
example, the damage detection rate at Joint 1 of DS 1
is 0.8, as shown in Table 2, which implies that 8 of the
10 testing damage points at Joint 1 are identified as
damage points (i.e. novelty points) by a well-trained
intact model using 60 training intact points.
Using the damage detection rates of each DS in
Table 2, the joints with the highest rates of damage Figure 13. Decision graph of the density peak points selection
detection are identified as the joints closest to the dam- for clusters at Joint 3.
age locations. In this manner, the potential damage
positions in the experimental structure can be localized.
In the case of DS 1, valuable information is provided rate at Joint 2 is higher than most of the rates at the
about the process of locating minor damage at Joint 1 other joints. Therefore, the damaged column in DS 4 is
because the highest rate is observed at Joint 1 and Joint well localized to some extent.
10. Meanwhile, we find that Joint 10 is the neighboring Detailed procedures of the damage detection exam-
joint to Joint 1, as shown in Figure 11. It is encouraging ple are presented for Joint 3. After the calculation of
to find that major damages at Joint 1 and Joint 10 are local density r and distance d of the 60 intact points at
directly localized because the detection rates at Joint 1 Joint 3, the decision graph of these intact points is
and Joint 10 are the highest in DS 2 and DS 3, respec- shown in Figure 13. As shown in this figure, two colors,
tively. The same was observed in the case of damage that is, cyan and magenta, and large points are selected
localization of DS 4. In this DS, the damage position is as the cluster density peak points. The ranges of the
in the column between Joint 2 and Joint 3, and we find selection region are r  3:0 and d  0:2, shown in
that the detection rate at Joint 3 is the highest and the Table 2 for Joint 3. This selection region is determined
10
Figure 14 Distribution of well-trained intact model with
identified halo points after clustering.
by examining the formed decision graph to ensure that
the selected cluster density peak points exhibit a rela-
tively large d and high r as compared to the other black
points shown in Figure 13. The explanation of why and
how cluster density peak points are selected is given in
Step 3 of section ‘‘Method: DPFC.’’
The clustering result of the 60 intact points from
Joint 3 is shown in Figure 14. Two clusters are formed
on the basis of the two selected cluster density peak
points shown in Figure 13. By increasing the value of w
to 2.4, the halo points of the two formed clusters are
identified by the DPFCA, which is illustrated in Step 6
of section ‘‘Method: DPFC.’’ Meanwhile, two values of
rb of the two formed clusters are obtained. The halo
points can be observed as the identified novelty points
among the intact points. In total, 10 halo points are
identified from the 60 training intact points, as shown
in Figure 14; thus, the false-positive rate rfp of Joint 3 is
0.167.
In total, 10 testing damage points at Joint 3 in DS 4
are added to the well-trained intact model separately,
and the proposed method calculates their local densities
rt . Comparing the values of rt and rb , nine damage
points with a local density lower than rb are identified,
which is illustrated in Step 7 of section ‘‘Method:
DPFC.’’ Thus, the damage localization rate at Joint 3
in DS 4 is 0.9. Figure 15 shows the 10 testing damage
point distributions, the identified damage points, and
the well-trained intact model simultaneously.
In order to show the superiority of the DPFC
method in structural damage localization, a well-
known novelty detection method using a OC-SVM is
applied for a comparative study.10,11 The OC-SVM
algorithm first maps the training data objectives to a
high-dimensional space and iteratively determines the
optimal margin hyperplane, which best encloses the
training objectives in the space.
Structural Health Monitoring
Figure 15. Well-trained intact model and distribution of
testing and identified damage points.
Figure 16. Localization of damage at Joint 10 in DS 3 using
OC-SVM.
In this case study, OC-SVM is trained using the 60
intact points to obtain a well-trained intact model with
an optimal classifier for each structural joint. The clas-
sifier can be observed to be a boundary that encloses a
majority of the intact points, and few intact points lie
outside the enclosed boundary. After the intact models
are well trained, 10 testing damage points are added to
the trained model. The testing damage points outside
the enclosed boundary are identified as novelty points.
In a DS, the rate of damage detection for each joint is
calculated as the number of identified novelty points
divided by the number of testing damage points.
In the case of damage localization of DS 3, the dam-
age detection rates calculated by OC-SVM are shown
in Figure 16. In this figure, it is shown that the detec-
tion rate at the damage position, that is, Joint 10,
reaches only 0.2, which cannot directly localize the
damage. Joint 11, as the neighbor of Joint 10 shown in
Figure 11, exhibits the highest detection rate of 0.9.
This information is beneficial for localizing the
Cha and Wang
potential damage position. However, the proposed
DPFC method performs better than the OC-SVM
because the damage at Joint 10 is directly localized
using the DPFCA. Even though the OC-SVM has been
verified as an effective approach for damage detection
by previous research works, it still requires improve-
ment in terms of damage localization.10,11 Thus, the
DPFC method is advantageous for carrying out struc-
tural damage localization, particularly for locating the
damage positions in complex multi-story and multi-
span structures.
The proposed DPFC method performs rather well in
the case of structural damage localization of multi-layer
and multi-span structures. As an unsupervised novelty
detection method, the modified DPFC uses data only
from an intact structure to establish a trained model. In
this study, the time taken to achieve damage localiza-
tion is quite fast because of the advantages of the fast
clustering process of DPFC, which has a great potential
to be applied to the real-time monitoring of damage in
mechanical and civil infrastructures. However, owing
to the limited volume of 60 intact training points, intact
models were not trained very well in several cases. The
number of novelty points in some trained intact models
is slightly higher than expected, which causes relatively
high false-positive rates. In addition, owing to the lim-
ited volume of 10 damage points in each DS, the rates
of damage detection at a few joints achieved identical
values, and it may be difficult to directly locate the
potential at a number of damage positions in a DS
under this condition. Thus, it is likely that damage loca-
lization performs much better when the volume of the
data set from damage structures is increased. Finally,
numerous parameters in the DPFCA need to be manu-
ally set, and this disadvantage is likely to increase the
training time associated with selecting appropriate clus-
ter density peak points and finding the border regions
of the formed intact clusters.
Conclusion
An unsupervised novelty detection–based DPFCA was
proposed and applied to localize structural damages. In
order to increase the precision of damage localization,
the adjustment of using the Gaussian kernel function
of radius to calculate the local density of points was
made to the original DPFCA. Besides, the process of
obtaining the thresholds of local density for the formed
clusters was added to the algorithm to facilitate the
DPFCA to detect novelty points. In the case study, the
crest factor and one extracted feature from the CWT
were used as damage-sensitive features for the pro-
posed damage detection method, which were calculated
from the measured acceleration signals from the cluster
11
of sensors installed on a laboratory-scale steel struc-
ture. Various types of structural damages were created
for the experimental studies. The structure was tested
several times under intact and various DS. The experi-
mental results showed that the improved DPFCA
showed high performance of structural damage locali-
zation in the case of multi-story and multi-bay struc-
tures. Valuable information was obtained by applying
the improved DPFCA to localize the damage positions
in the laboratory-scale steel structure. Moreover, the
proposed method also showed superior performance
over the OC-SVM, which is currently widely used in
structural damage detection and localization. Even
though unsupervised novelty detection using the
improved DPFC method presented superior perfor-
mance of damage localization, considerably more
research effort can be invested to improve the computa-
tional efficiency of the improved DPFCA, such as
reducing the workload of artificial parameter setting.
Thus, one objective of the future research is to improve
the algorithm of the improved DPFCA to increase its
capacity of automation and robustness in varying
external loads. Besides, it is our expectation that this
experimental structure can be tested more times to
increase the volume of the experimental data set and
create more types of structural damages, which can be
added in various combinations for DS.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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