Sensor Placement Optimization of a Helicopter Main Rotor Blade

Abstract

This chapter describes the importance of one of the major areas within Structural HealthMonitoring and Health and Usage Monitoring Systems: Sensor Placement Optimization (SPO). In this sense, the most important SPO metrics are presented and discussed with the reader. The methodological procedure of the optimization problem statement is also considered and discussed. he significance of rotary-wing aircraft, damages that can occur in the blade, works related to damage identification, modern methods and algorithms that have been used in this context, and a comprehensive SPO study for a helicopter main rotor blade will be presented. Finally, a new technique that considers the number of sensors as an objective associated with some of the main metrics used in SPO. The technique uses the Multiobjective Lichtenberg Algorithm and Feature Selection, an important area used in Data Mining.

Multi-objective sensor placement optimization and damage identification for an aircraft wing using Lichtenberg algorithm

“…It is known that some mechanical properties of structures are affected by their state, whether original (without defects) or in the presence of damage in the form of delaminations, holes, cracks, among others. According to Pereira et al. (2022a), these properties are the natural frequencies, the mode shapes, the modal strain energy, and the damping rates.…”

“…The more sensors, the greater amount of modal information acquired accurately and efficiently. However, the greater the number of sensors, the greater the costs and the amount of data processed, in addition to the significant addition of mass to be able to change the modal properties by the mass of the sensors and additional equipment necessary for the structure (Pereira et al. , 2022a).…”

“…In this work will be used the Lichtenberg Algorithm for damage identification (LA) (Pereira et al. , 2021b) and the Multi-objective Lichtenberg Algorithm (Pereira et al. , 2022a) for the new sensor placement optimization method using Feature Selection.…”

“…, 2020a, b; Pereira et al. , 2022c), multi-objective problems (Pereira et al. , 2022a), hydrogen production (Souza et al.…”

“…This work aims to present a complete procedure for monitoring the structural health of aircraft wings, involving both the optimization of the sensor positions and the damage identification using modal techniques, metaheuristics, and a multi-objective algorithm unprecedented in the literature for SPO. The Multi-objective Sensor Selection and Placement Optimization based on Lichtenberg Algorithm is the only algorithm in the literature capable of considering the number of sensors as a variable optimization objective, which is made possible by applying feature selection techniques, a technique used in data mining for data pre-processing before machine learning algorithms training (Pereira et al, 2022a). This technique, which until now has only been applied to a helicopter rotor blade, will be applied in this study to an aircraft wing and will show for the first time in the literature how the main modal metrics vary with the increase of the sensor number, analyzing its Pareto fronts.…”