• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.247-257
• /
• 2023

In structural health monitoring of large-scale structures, optimal sensor placement plays an important role because of the high cost of sensors and their supporting instruments, as well as the burden of data transmission and storage. In this study, a vibration sensor placement algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is proposed, which can effectively solve non-convex, high-dimensional, and discrete combinatorial sensor placement optimization problems. An objective function is constructed to estimate the quality of a specific vibration sensor placement scheme according to the modal assurance criterion (MAC). Using this objective function, a DRL-based algorithm is presented to determine the optimal vibration sensor placement scheme. Subsequently, we transform the sensor optimal placement process into a Markov decision process and employ a DRL-based optimization algorithm to maximize the objective function for optimal sensor placement. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed method, two examples are presented: a 10-story braced frame and a sea-crossing bridge model. A comparison study is also performed with a genetic algorithm and particle swarm algorithm. The proposed DRL-based algorithm can effectively solve the discrete combinatorial optimization problem for vibration sensor placements and can produce superior performance compared with the other two existing methods.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.241-247
• /
• 2011

Although intensive development continues on innovative sensor systems, there is still considerable uncertainty in deciding on the number of sensors required and their locations in order to obtain adequate information on structural behavior. This paper is concerned with the sensor locations on a beam-structure for prognostic structural health monitoring. The purpose of this study is to investigate how to determine optimal sensor placement(OSP) from the sensitivity information of a known failure mode. The sensitivity of the forced vibration response of a beam to the variation of stiffness due to a crack is calculated analytically and used to determine the optimal sensor locations for the specified failure mode. The results of this method compared with the results of different OSP methods. The results have shown that the proposed method on optimal sensor placement is very effective in structural health monitoring.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.10 no.4_5
• /
• pp.443-458
• /
• 2012

The structural health monitoring (SHM) benchmark study on optimal sensor placement problem for the instrumented Canton Tower has been launched. It follows the success of the modal identification and model updating for the Canton Tower in the previous benchmark study, and focuses on the optimal placement of vibration sensors (accelerometers) in the interest of bettering the SHM system. In this paper, the sensor placement problem for the Canton Tower and the benchmark model for this study are first detailed. Then an information entropy based sensor placement method with the purpose of damage detection is proposed and applied to the benchmark problem. The procedure that will be implemented for structural damage detection using the data obtained from the optimal sensor placement strategy is introduced and the information on structural damage is specified. The information entropy based method is applied to measure the uncertainties throughout the damage detection process with the use of the obtained data. Accordingly, a multi-objective optimal problem in terms of sensor placement is formulated. The optimal solution is determined as the one that provides equally most informative data for all objectives, and thus the data obtained is most informative for structural damage detection. To validate the effectiveness of the optimally determined sensor placement, damage detection is performed on different damage scenarios of the benchmark model using the noise-free and noise-corrupted measured information, respectively. The results show that in comparison with the existing in-service sensor deployment on the structure, the optimally determined one is capable of further enhancing the capability of damage detection.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.389-406
• /
• 2014

Optimal sensor placement techniques play a significant role in enhancing the quality of modal data during the vibration based health monitoring of civil structures, where many degrees of freedom are available despite a limited number of sensors. The literature has shown a shift in the trends for solving such problems, from expansion or elimination approach to the employment of heuristic algorithms. Although these heuristic algorithms are capable of providing a global optimal solution, their greatest drawback is the requirement of high computational effort. Because a highly efficient optimisation method is crucial for better accuracy and wider use, this paper presents an improved simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to solve the sensor placement problem. The algorithm is developed based on the sensor locations' coordinate system to allow for the searching in additional dimensions and to increase SA's random search performance while minimising the computation efforts. The proposed method is tested on a numerical slab model that consists of two hundred sensor location candidates using three types of objective functions; the determinant of the Fisher information matrix (FIM), modal assurance criterion (MAC), and mean square error (MSE) of mode shapes. Detailed study on the effects of the sensor numbers and cooling factors on the performance of the algorithm are also investigated. The results indicate that the proposed method outperforms conventional SA and Genetic Algorithm (GA) in the search for optimal sensor placement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.465-492
• /
• 2008

Proper pretest planning is a vital component of any successful vibration test on engineering structures. The most important issue in dynamic testing of many engineering structures is arriving at the number and optimal placement of sensors. The sensors must be placed on the structure in such a way that all the important dynamic behaviour of a structural system is captured during the course of the test with sufficient accuracy so that the information can be effectively utilised for structural parameter identification or health monitoring. Several optimal sensor placement (OSP) techniques are proposed in the literature and each of these methods have been evaluated with respect to a specific problem encountered in various engineering disciplines like aerospace, civil, mechanical engineering, etc. In the present work, we propose to perform a detailed characteristic evaluation of some selective popular OSP techniques with respect to their application to practical civil engineering problems. Numerical experiments carried out in the paper on various practical civil engineering structures indicate that effective independence (EFI) method is more consistent when compared to all other sensor placement techniques.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
• /
• v.9 no.1
• /
• pp.59-80
• /
• 2022

In the present study, the objective is to detect the structural damages using the responses obtained from the sensors at the optimal location under uncertainty conditions. Reducing the error rate in damage detection process due to responses' noise is an important goal in this study. In the proposed algorithm for optimal sensor placement, the noise of responses recorded from the sensors is initially reduced using the principal component analysis. Afterward, the optimal sensor placement is obtained by the damage detection equation based sensitivity analysis. The sensors are placed on degrees of freedom corresponding to the minimum error rate in structural damage detection through this procedure. The efficiency of the proposed method is studied on a truss bridge, a space dome, a double-layer grid as well as a three-story experimental frame structure and the results are compared. Moreover, the performance of the suggested method is compared with three other algorithms of Average Driving Point Residue (ADPR), Effective Independence (EI) method, and a mass weighting version of EI. In the examples, young's modulus, density, and cross-sectional areas of the elements are considered as uncertainty parameters. Ultimately, the results have demonstrated that the presented algorithm under uncertainty conditions represents a high accuracy to obtain the optimal sensor placement in the structures.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.41-48
• /
• 2007

In this paper, we propose an optimal placement of sensor nodes with 2.4GHz wireless channel characteristics. The proposed method determines optimal transmission range based on log-normal path loss model, and optimal number of sensor nodes calculating the density of sensor nodes. For the lossless data transmission, we search the optimal locations with self-organizing feature maps(SOM) using transmission range, and number of sensor nodes. We demonstrate that optimal transmission range is 20m, and optimal number of sensor nodes is 8. We performed simulations on the searching for optimal locations and confirmed the link condition of sensor nodes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.591-603
• /
• 2020

Dynamic deflection monitoring is an essential and critical part of structural health monitoring for high-speed railway bridges. Two critical problems need to be addressed when using inclinometer sensors for such applications. These include constructing a general representation model of inclination-deflection and addressing the ill-posed inverse problem to obtain the accurate dynamic deflection. This paper provides a dynamic deflection monitoring method with the placement of optimal inclinometer sensors for high-speed railway bridges. The deflection shapes are reconstructed using the inclination-deflection transformation model based on the differential relationship between the inclination and displacement mode shape matrix. The proposed optimal sensor configuration can be used to select inclination-deflection transformation models that meet the required accuracy and stability from all possible sensor locations. In this study, the condition number and information entropy are employed to measure the ill-condition of the selected mode shape matrix and evaluate the prediction performance of different sensor configurations. The particle swarm optimization algorithm, genetic algorithm, and artificial fish swarm algorithm are used to optimize the sensor position placement. Numerical simulation and experimental validation results of a 5-span high-speed railway bridge show that the reconstructed deflection shapes agree well with those of the real bridge.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.169-181
• /
• 2020

Sensor placement is a crucial aspect of bridge health monitoring (BHM) dedicated to accurately estimate and locate structural damages. In addressing this goal, a sensor placement framework based on the deflection influence line (DIL) analysis is here proposed, for the optimal design of damage detection-oriented BHM system. In order to improve damage detection accuracy, we explore the change of global stiffness matrix, damage coefficient matrix and DIL vector caused by structural damage, and thus develop a novel sensor placement framework based on the Fisher information matrix. Our approach seeks to determine the contribution of each sensing node to damage detection, and adopts a distance correction coefficient to eliminate the information redundancy among sensors. The proposed damage detection-oriented optimal sensor placement (OSP) method is verified by two examples: (1) a numerically simulated three-span continuous beam, and (2) the Pinghu bridge which has existing real damage conditions. These two examples verify the performance of the distance corrected damage sensitivity of influence line (DSIL) method in significantly higher contribution to damage detection and lower information redundancy, and demonstrate the proposed OSP framework can be potentially employed in BHM practices.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.769-780
• /
• 2017

Cable force monitoring is an essential and critical part of the safety evaluation of cable-supported bridges. A reasonable cable force monitoring scheme, particularly, sensor placement related to accurate safety assessment and budget cost-saving becomes a major concern of bridge administrative authorities. This paper presents optimal sensor placement for cable force monitoring by selecting representative sensor positions, which consider the spatial correlativeness existing in the cable group. The limited sensors would be utilized for maximizing useful information from the monitored bridges. The maximum information coefficient (MIC), mutual information (MI) based kernel density estimation, as well as Pearson coefficients, were all employed to detect potential spatial correlation in the cable group. Compared with the Pearson coefficient and MIC, the mutual information is more suitable for identifying the association existing in cable group and thus, is selected to describe the spatial relevance in this study. Then, the bond energy algorithm, which collects clusters based on the relationship of surrounding elements, is used for the optimal placement of cable sensors. Several optimal placement strategies are discussed with different correlation thresholds for the cable group of Nanjing No.3 Yangtze River Bridge, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method.