Distributed structural health monitoring with a smart sensor array

This paper presents work on smart sensor arrays for distributed structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage diagnosis. The goal of the work was to implement local vibration-based diagnostic algorithms inside a smart 'black box' to demonstrate the feasibility of distributed health monitoring for damage detection and location. Dynamic transmissibility features for SHM and the smart-processing platform are described in detail and various damage configurations in two large test structures, a representative three-storey building and a rotorcraft fuselage, are diagnosed. The results show that the near real-time integrated monitoring system works well in spite of certain limited environmental fluctuations (e.g. temperature, input levels) and boundary condition non-linearities. Wired piezoelectric arrays of accelerometers are implemented in conjunction with the black box. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.