The paper presents the results of computational studies on damage localization in beam-like structures based on an approach of application of selected time-frequency distributions to modal shapes of vibration. The studies were performed on the results of finite element analysis on determination of modal shapes of vibration of a composite beam. The damage detection and localization procedure was shown on several examples of time-frequency distributions with a discussion of their performance for structural damage detection and localization problems. Additional studies were performed for artificially noised modal shapes in order to investigate an applicability of the proposed approach in noisy conditions. It was shown that application of time-frequency distributions is the effective tool in structural damage detection and localization, and can be a good alternative to the well-known signal processing techniques applied in these problems.