Abstract: It is presented a method for structural damage identification based on the time-domain residual force vector. Starting from the structural vibration equation， an expression for the time-domain residual force vector is derived from the dynamic response of the structure under forced vibration conditions. The time-domain residual force vector contains the time information related to the damage process and can identify the moment of damage. Afterwards， the damage localization indicator is established by the coefficient of variation of the time domain residual force vector of the nodes to determine the damage location. The structural residual force matrix is eigen-decomposed， whereby the extracted eigenvectors are invariant before and after the damage and the eigenvalues are a function of the damage level. Therefore， the damage level indicator is constructed by extracting the elemental stiffness parameters from the eigenvalues to directly identify the damage extent. This paper applies the time-domain residual force vector method to the damage identification of the Wuhan Junshan Yangtze River Bridge model， which can identify the time， location， and damage level of damage occurrence with high accuracy under both single and multiple point load inputs. The method extracts the damage time， location， and extent indicators by decomposing the time-domain residual force vectors. The calculation process is intuitive and highly accurate， avoiding the complex time-frequency transformation and optimization iterations.