Optimal sensors placement and elimination of undesirable mode shapes

A new approach to optimal placement of sensors in mechanical structures is presented. In contrast to existing methods, the presented procedure enables a designer to seek for a trade-off between the presence of desirable modes in captured measurements, and the elimination of influence of those mode shapes that are not of interest in a given situation. An efficient numerical algorithm is presented, developed from an existing routine based on the Fischer information matrix analysis. Performance of our approach is demonstrated be means of two simple textbook examples.