Inverse identification of time history of wave load obtained from the measured structural response can provide a reliable load information for the design and health monitoring of marine structures. In this paper

a random wave load inversion method based on recursive optimization algorithm is proposed. This method establishes an objective function based on Newmark-

β

for every time step and then

the wave load is identified from the measured acceleration recursively. As is noteworthy

the identified load at every time point is recursively derived from the measured acceleration and the load at the former time point for which the involved optimization problem is at small scale

and consequently

the whole load inversion procedure is very efficient.A numerical example on a two-story ocean structure shows that the proposed method can effectively identify the random wave load and is insensitive to measurement noise.