By using chaotic excitation and attractor geometric property analysis, a method to identify the joint damage was presented. A chaotic excitation signal was used to interrogate the structure, and the measured structural response attractor was reconstructed in state space. A new feature based on the attractor local variance was extracted and used to identify the damage. An experimental cantilevered beam for the joint damage identification was designed, and the joint damage conditions were quantified by varying the fastener preload. The approach was applied to detec five different joint damage conditions. The results indicate that this approach can be used to identify the joint damage and the feature is monotonic varying with the damage condition changes.