A Method of Damage Detection Efficiency Enhancement of PZT Sensor Networks under Influence of Environmental and Operational Conditions

Two performance parameters are particularly important for the assessment of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, i.e., their damage detection capabilities and risk of false positive indications due to varying environmental and operational conditions (EOCs). A reduced ratio of false-positive indications can be of significant importance for particular applications, for example, in aerospace, where the costs of unplanned maintenance procedures can be very high. In such cases, the reduction of the false calls ratio can be critical for the possibility of the practical application of the system, apart from damage detection efficiency and system costs. Among various sensor technologies, PZT networks are proven to be one of the most universal approaches to SHM, and they were successfully applied in different scenarios. Moreover, many EOCs which may have an impact on the risk of false positive indications have been identified. Over the years, different approaches to the influence of EOCs compensation have been proposed. Compensation methods can be tailored to the particular way in which a given measurement condition, for example, ambient temperature, alters signals acquired by the PZT network or can be formulated to be also applied in the more general case. In the paper, a method for enhancement of damage detection efficiency under influence of EOCs of general nature is proposed. The particular measurement condition affecting signals acquired by PZT sensors neither needs to be measured, which could be hard in some cases, but also nor even have to be identified. The efficiency of the proposed compensation algorithms is verified based on the example of experimental results obtained under varying temperatures.