Quantification of Shm Sensor Array Performance

In order to specify the performance of a guided wave structural health monitoring system it is important to have an understanding of the inherent signal to noise ratio that can be expected from any given sensor network. While this has been studied for single pairs of sensors, this has not been carried out where multiple sensor pairs are interacting. This paper quantifies the signal to noise performance of various multiple sensor geometries. This is done through study of both the worst case noise and worst case signal inherent in each of the described geometries. This is then used to draw conclusions about sensor placement, and geometry for practical guided wave SHM.