Structure health monitoring is the scientific process of nondestructively identifying characteristics related to the fitness of structurecomponent or system. The structure component health monitoring is largely based on visual observations described by subjective indices，and itis necessary to develop a methodology for an accurate and reliable health monitoring. The paper presents a method using experimental modalvibration models for structure components and materials. The structure response is expressed in terms of component natural frequencies anddeflection mode shapes which can be used to estimate the modal parameter and then locating damage of the component. In the end，a three-DOFsystem model was used to extract the modal frequencies and modal vectors and to locate the damage. The result shows that some mode shapewould cause all elements in the system model to undergo limited amounts of response，therefore changes to dampers and springs would not veryvisible in the response data. The appropriate mode shape should be chosen. Using the appropriate mode the structure health monitoring can beapplied. The experimental modal vibration model is a practical model.