Investigation of a Stochastic Inverse Method to Estimate an External Force: Applications to a Wave-Structure Interaction

The determination of an external force is a very important task for the purpose of control, monitoring, and analysis of damages on structural system. This paper studies a stochastic inverse method that can be used for determining external forces acting on a nonlinear vibrating system. For the purpose of estimation, a stochastic inverse function is formulated to link an unknown external force to an observable quantity. The external force is then estimated from measurements of dynamic responses through the formulated stochastic inverse model. The applicability of the proposed method was verified with numerical examples and laboratory tests concerning the wavestructure interaction problem. The results showed that the proposed method is reliable to estimate the external force acting on a nonlinear system.