Abstract: With more and more accidents on the reticulated shells in recent years, damage detection and structural health monitoring on it has become extremely urgent. Based on the characteristics of reticulated shells, the formulations of residual modal force and the minimum rank perturbation theory are derived. The feasibility of the two algorithms to detect the damage in the large-scale reticulated shells is investigated. According to the similarity theory, one single-layer geodesic dome was designed. Modal test on the structural model were carried out and the structural modal parameters for damage detection were obtained. Guyan reduction and the minimum rank perturbation theory were used to reduce and modify the finite element model respectively. The whole damage location and extent evaluation procedure based on the numerical data and experimental data are compared. The results show that the two-step damage detection algorithm based on the residual modal force and the minimum rank perturbation theory can determine the single damage location and the multi-damage location, and can evaluate the damage extent. It is feasible to health diagnosis in reticulated shells.