• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.53-68
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• 2017

The response sensitivity method in time domain has been applied extensively for damage identification. In this paper, the relationship between the error of damage identification and the sensitivity matrix is investigated through perturbation analysis. An index is defined according to the perturbation amplify effect and an optimal sensor placement method is proposed based on the minimization of that index. A sequential sub-optimal algorithm is presented which results in consistently good location selection. Numerical simulations with a two-dimensional high truss structure are conducted to validate the proposed method. Results reveal that the damage identification using the optimal sensor placement determined by the proposed method can identify multiple damages of the structure more accurately.