Novel Sensor Placement for Damage Identification in a Cracked Complex Structure with Structural Variability

The focus of this study is on sensor placement for damage detection. In particular, novel sensor placement techniques are presented to detect the length of a crack in ground vehicles. These techniques are designed to provide vibration characteristics for structures that have both cracks and structural variability. Such techniques are needed because structural variability affects the mode shapes of a structure, and thus the optimal sensor locations for detecting cracks are affected. Two key approaches are developed and used: (1) PROMs, and (2) BMA. Based on PROMs and BMA, a novel sensor placement is proposed to determine the optimal sensor locations for complex structures with cracks and structural variability. The information from the sensors can be used to determine variations in the mode shapes of the structure for different crack lengths. The variation in mode shapes can then be used to identify the crack length. Numerical results are presented for a ground vehicle frame. The sensor placement method is applied first to find the optimal sensor locations in the presence of parameter variability, and then to identify the length of a crack.