This paper presents the processing of nonlinear features associated with a damage event by quadratic time-frequency distributions for damage identification in a frame structure. A time-frequency distribution is a function which distributes the total energy of a signal at a particular time and frequency point. As the occurrence of damage often gives rise to non-stationary, nonlinear structural behavior, simultaneous representation of the dynamic response in the time-frequency plane offers valuable insight for damage detection. The applicability of the bilinear time-frequency distributions of the Cohen class is examined for the damage assessment of a frame structure from the simulated acceleration data. It is shown that the changes in instantaneous energy of the dynamic response could be a good damage indicator. Presence and location of damage can be identified using Choi-Williams distribution when damping is ignored. However, in the presence of damping the Page distribution is more effective and offers better readability for structural damage detection.