Optimal Placement of Sensors for Damage Characterization Using Genetic Algorithms

Sensor data are the basis for health assessment of complex structural systems. Careful selection and logical layout of sensors is critical to enable the high reliability of system health assessment. This paper presents a methodology how to use a minimum number of sensors, and what locations of them should be placed, so that the voltage signals received from the sensor can be used to detect both presence and extent of damage. In this study, an optimization procedure is developed using Genetic Algorithm (GA) to determine the location of piezoelectric sensor for damage detection in a composite wingbox. A new damage index using all differences in voltage signals decomposed by wavelet transform is proposed. Results show that the proposed method is available at determining number and location of sensors for structural damage detection using piezoelectric patch sensors.