Abstract
The identification of external force acting on a machine or a structure is important for the diagnosis. One of the force identification methods is based on the frequency response function. The method is very useful although it requires the information of location of force acting. In this study, an identification method is proposed for the case of unknown excitation points. The method is firstly the external forces, whose amount is same as the one of sensors, are assumed at every candidate location, and the amplitudes of forces are identified. Then the exact location of external force is determined by the classification of all identified results. The method is numerically checked and it was shown that the method was useful using the data with noise. Moreover the experimental results showed that the method was feasible when the location and amplitude are separately identified.
