With the advantages of large span, light deadweight and convenient construction, the steel-concrete composite beam (SCCB) has been rapidly developed as a medium span bridge. Compared with common beams, the global stiffness of SCCB is discontinuous and in a staged distribution. In this paper, the analysis model for the simply-supported SCCB is established and the vibration equations are derived. The natural vibration characteristics of a simply-supported SCCB are analyzed, and are compared with the theoretical and experimental results. A curvature mode measurement method is proposed to identify the shear connector damage of SCCB, with the stiffness reduction factor to describe the variation of shear connection stiffness. By analysis on the $1^{st}$ to $3^{rd}$ vertical modes, the distribution of shear connectors between the steel girder and the concrete slab are well identified, and the damage locations and failure degrees are detected. The results show that the curvature modes can be used for identification of the damage location.