Impact Detection using Artificial Neural Networks

In this work, a number of impacts on a composite stiffened panel fitted with piezoceramic sensors were simulated with the finite element (FE) method. During impacts, the contact force history and strains at the sensors were recorded. These data were used to train, validate and test two artificial neural networks (ANN) for the prediction of the impact position and the peak of the impact force. The performance of the network for location detection has been promising but the other network should be further improved to provide acceptable predictions about the peak force.