This article presents a newly developed modal strain energy decomposition method for damage localization that is capable of identifying damage to individual members of three-dimensional (3D) frame structures. This method is based on decomposing the modal strain energy of each structural member (or element) into two parts, one associated with the element's axial coordinates and the other with its transverse coordinates. In turn, two damage indicators are calculated for each member to perform the damage localization analysis. Implementing this method requires only a small number of mode shapes identified from both the damaged and baseline structures. Numerical studies are conducted of a 3D five-story frame structure and also a complicated offshore template platform, based on synthetic data generated from finite-element models. In addition to providing theoretical insights to illustrate the advantages of using this newly developed method, this article also demonstrates numerically that the new method is capable of localizing various kinds of damaged elements (a vertical pile, horizontal beam, or slanted brace) at a template offshore structure.
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