Optimal sensor placement for health monitoring of boom structure of concrete pump truck

In order to implement the optimal placement of strain sensors for the health monitoring of flexible multi-body structures such as the boom structure of concrete pump trucks, a fuzzy support degree matrix is constructed by using the correlation coefficients of strain signals of the measuring points to be selected, and the comprehensive support degree of each measuring point is calculated. Then, some factors, such as the stress level, the sensor installation difficulty, the measuring point security and the stress gradient, are classified and standardized, and the weight of each factor is determined through an analytical hierarchy process. Moreover, the sensor locations are optimized according to the comprehensive evaluation results. Finally, a typical four-segment boom concrete pump truck is selected as the object to perform the sensor placement optimization under four different working conditions. The results show that the proposed comprehensive evaluation method is both stable and feasible.