Optimal Sensor Placement Using Improved Sensitivity Analysis Method

A new method of optimal sensor placement which is called sensitivity analysis method (SAM) is presented in this paper. It uses structural curvature mode shape changes due to stiffness changes (damages are simulated as stiffness reduction) to analyze the sensitivity. Then, another two traditional methods of optimal sensor placement - the effective independence method (EIM) based on maximizing the data information and the kinetic energy method (KEM) based on maximizing the kinetic energy are discussed briefly, and we compare our new method (SAM) with the two traditional methods under two modal criteria, mean square error (MSE) and modal assurance critical (MAC). The numerical simulation results show that the SAM is the best one of the three.