A Multiobjective Perspective to Optimal Sensor Placement by Using a Decomposition-Based Evolutionary Algorithm in Structural Health Monitoring

Featured Application A multiobjective approach for optimal sensor placement in structure health monitoring regarding mode shapes, redundancy, and signal strength was proposed. This method can be exploited for various types of structures such as buildings, bridges, and offshore jacket foundations in a preference of weightings on each objective. The objective of optimal sensor placement in a dynamic system is to obtain a sensor layout that provides as much information as possible for structural health monitoring (SHM). Whereas most studies use only one modal assurance criterion for SHM, this work considers two additional metrics, signal redundancy and noise ratio, combining into three optimization objectives: Linear independence of mode shapes, dynamic information redundancy, and vibration response signal strength. A modified multiobjective evolutionary algorithm was combined with particle swarm optimization to explore the optimal solution sets. In the final determination, a multiobjective decision-making (MODM) strategy based on distance measurement was used to optimize the aforementioned objectives. We applied it to a reduced finite-element beam model of a reference building and compared it with other selection methods. The results indicated that MODM suitably balanced the objective functions and outperformed the compared methods. We further constructed a three-story frame structure for experimentally validating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results indicated that complete structural modal information can be effectively obtained by applying the MODM approach to identify sensor locations.