Optimal Sensor Configuration for Fatigue Life Prediction in Structural Applications

Abstract Structural health monitoring is spreading widely across engineering domains. Its added value is not restricted to observing structural behavior, but crosses over to enabling the assessment of structural integrity under varying operating conditions. Damage prognosis is one vital demand from structural health monitoring solutions. Many methods have been developed to update damage predictions based on sensor data, nonetheless the selection and positioning of sensors to alleviate the prediction errors remains a question under investigation. In this work, an optimal sensor placement method is proposed for fatigue damage prediction in structures. An optimization problem is formulated to minimize the a-posteriori damage estimation error based on a Kalman filter. The derivation of the objective function is presented, along with a discussion of algorithm-related issues. Finally, the mentioned damage prediction approach is applied to two structures to verify the adequacy of the sensor configurations proposed by the method.