In this paper, the technology of attractor phase space in chaotic theory is introduced and applied in the structural damage detection. Firstly the phase plane is constructed with the displacement and acceleration responses. Using the changes of phase plane topology of intact and damaged responses, a new damage index is extracted, and the structural damage existence and severity are identified successfully. Since some of the state variables can not be measured, a method of phase space reconstruction is proposed using single dynamic response. The dynamic responses are directly displayed into phase space, realizing transforming the signals from time domain to space domain. Then using the reconstructed phase space, the damage is diagnosed. The results indicate that the phase space reconstruction method has good robustness to noise, and higher sensitivity compared with traditional modal-based methods. The phase space reconstruction method can calculate the value of the damage index using single dynamic response, so that a single sensor can monitor structural damage existence and severity.