A damage assessment methodology for structural systems using transfer learning from the audio domain

Neural network-based strategies require balanced training datasets to avoid creating unreliable classification and prediction models. While these strategies are commonly used to model the dynamics of structural and mechanical systems, the imbalanced composition of monitoring data is a fundamental challenge for damage assessment in structural systems. The monitoring data often contain abundant observations from structures in their normal operating conditions (undamaged state) and small and partial information from systems in the damaged state. Therefore, the model, trained by adopting deep learning approaches, tends to show an ill-conditioned nature, limited to specific structures in a narrow range of damage conditions.