Abstract: Affected by many external factors, the relation between concrete arch dam damage and modal information is apparently nonlinear, which makes it difficult to accurately identify the degree of structural damage by traditional modal analysis. Aimed at these problems, a method of identifying the damage of concrete arch dam by using mean curvature mode and least squares support vector machine is proposed. On the basis of numerical simulation, the damage location is firstly identified using mean curvature mode, then the non-linear relationship between mean curvature mode and damage degree is established using least squares support vector machine to identify the damage degree. Engineering example shows that by using this method, the location and degree of various damages occurring simultaneously can be effectively identified.

Key words: mean curvature mode, least squares support vector machine, concrete arch dam, damage identification