ABSTRACTMarine environment is a harsh environment that can cause major issues for marine structures while operating in this environment, including fatigue cracking and corrosion damage, which can yield catastrophic consequences, such as human life losses, financial losses, environmental pollution, and so forth. Therefore, it is critical to take necessary actions before undesired situations happen. One potential solution is to install structural health monitoring systems on marine structures. Structural health monitoring is a technology to enhance the safety, stability, and functionality of large engineering structures. The inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) is a promising technique for this purpose. In this study, the corrosion damage detection capability of iFEM is presented by introducing two new damage parameters for plates under tension and bending loading conditions. The contribution of newly introduced parameters to the accuracy of iFEM on damage detection is demonstrated for multiple corrosion scenarios and sensor configurations.