A Brief Review of Structural Health Monitoring with Special Focus on Damage Detection and Sensor Optimization

Abstract

Abstract The process of implementing a damage identification strategy for aerospace, civil, mechanical, and offshore infrastructure is referred to as structural health monitoring (SHM). As a subject, it has been developed and refined over the past three decades and the research in the area has accelerated in multiple subtopics in recent years. This article provides a brief review of damage detection strategies and sensor optimization. Damage detection strategies include global methods or localized methods, where the former uses changes in vibration responses of a structure before and after damage occurs to detect the damage, identify its location, and evaluate its severity, if possible. The latter uses localized geometrical changes or material changes to identify the damage. The review focuses on academia and industry experiences of modal‐based damage detection methodologies, where changes in modal frequency, mode shapes, modal shape curvatures, and modal strain energy are used as damage indicators. In a structural health monitoring system, sensor optimization is in the central position connecting data acquisition, signal processing, data analysis and structural health evaluation output. Sensor optimization aims to minimize the number of sensors to be used and to identify the optimal locations to deploy them. Many optimization techniques have been applied in sensor optimization, and the application of those methodologies is reviewed in this article.