Recently the authors tried to find damage position only using measured frequency response functions. According to their work, it seems that the algorithm is very practical since it needs only measured frequency responses while other methods require exact analytic model. But when applying the method to a real structure, it requires lots of experiment. The authors, in this time, propose a method to reduce its experimental load by detecting damage within a substructure. This method searches damages not within an entire structure but within substructures. In addition, damage severity was treated in this paper since it is worthy to know damage severity. Optimization technique is used to estimate damage level using measured responses and damage model. Two test examples, a plate and a jointed structure, are chosen to verify the suggesting method.