A self-organising sensing system for structural health management

Abstract

This paper describes a new approach to structural health monitoring and management (SHM) that aims to diagnose and respond to damage using the self-organization of a complex system of distributed sensors and processing cells. To develop and evaluate the approach, an experimental SHM test-bed system has been developed, with the aim of detecting and characterising the damage from high-velocity impacts such as those due to micrometeoroids on a space vehicle. An important new feature of the system is an ability to support mobile (robotic) agents that can roam the exterior surface of the test-bed, obtaining additional damage information and providing a crude repair capability. The focus of this paper is the development of a self-organised approach to the operation of such a robotic agent, for which it obtains local information by direct communication with the fixed agents embedded in the underlying structure. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.