Ambient excitations applied to structures may lead to non-stationary vibration responses. In such circumstances, it may be difficult or improper to extract meaningful and significant damage features through methods that mainly rely on the stationarity of data. This article proposes a new hybrid algorithm for feature extraction as a combination of a new adaptive signal decomposition method called improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise and autoregressive moving average model. The major contribution of this algorithm is to address the important issue of feature extraction under ambient vibration and non-stationary signals. The improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise method is an improvement on the well-known ensemble empirical mode decomposition technique by removing redundant intrinsic mode functions. In addition, a novel automatic approach is presented to select the most relevant intrinsic mode functions to damage based on the intrinsic mode function energy level. Fitting an autoregressive moving average model to each selected intrinsic mode function, the model residuals are extracted as the damage-sensitive features. The main limitation is that such features are high-dimensional multivariate time series data, which may make a difficult and time-consuming decision-making process for damage localization. Multivariate distance correlation methods are introduced to cope with this drawback and locate structural damage using the multivariate residual sets of the normal and damaged conditions. The accuracy and robustness of the proposed methods are validated by a numerical shear-building model and an experimental benchmark structure. The effects of sampling frequency and time duration are evaluated as well. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and capability of the proposed methods to extract sufficient and reliable features, identify damage location, and quantify damage severity under ambient excitations and non-stationary signals.

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