Verification and Validation of Structural Health Monitoring Algorithms: A Maturation Procedure

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system offers new approaches to interrogate the integrity of structures. However, their reliability has still to be demonstrated an quantified to enable confidence transition from R&D to field implementation. In general, SHM algorithms performances are illustrated by topography study but it is not sufficient in a reliability assessment context. In the sense, that there is no quantification of the performance. To address this key issue, a dedicated maturation procedure is proposed in this paper. It is strongly inspired from the six sigma procedure for processes improvement to gradually improve SHM algorithms in order to reach the required maturity level. This paper presents the application of this procedure to a damage SHM localization algorithm as case study. To address this issue, finite element models and experimentation on the monitored structure have been used. It is concluded with a need of a new specific SHM algorithm intrinsic maturity scale. These maturity scales can be defined with respect to the functions of the considered SHM algorithm and the type of the used data.