Optimal sensor placement for large structures using the nearest neighbour index and a hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm

Research on optimal sensor placement (OSP) has become very important due to the need to obtain effective testing results with limited testing resources in health monitoring. In this study, a new methodology is proposed to select the best sensor locations for large structures. First, a novel fitness function derived from the nearest neighbour index is proposed to overcome the drawbacks of the effective independence method for OSP for large structures. This method maximizes the contribution of each sensor to modal observability and simultaneously avoids the redundancy of information between the selected degrees of freedom. A hybrid algorithm combining the improved discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) with the clonal selection algorithm is then implemented to optimize the proposed fitness function effectively. Finally, the proposed method is applied to an arch dam for performance verification. The results show that the proposed hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm outperforms a genetic algorithm with decimal two-dimension array encoding and DPSO in the capability of global optimization. The new fitness function is advantageous in terms of sensor distribution and ensuring a well-conditioned information matrix and orthogonality of modes, indicating that this method may be used to provide guidance for OSP in various large structures.