A Multivariate Cumulative Sum Method for Continuous Damage Monitoring with Lamb-wave Sensors

Abstract

This paper proposes a new damage monitoring method based on a multivariate cumulative sum test statistic applied to Lambwave sensing data for health monitoring in composites. The CUSUM monitoring method applied to the features extracted with Principal Components Analysis was studied to improve robustness of detection and sensitivity to small damages. The method is illustrated with measured sensor data from fatigue loading and impact tests of carbon fiber materials and the performance of the proposed CUSUM approach was compared with existing Mahalanobis distance based monitoring techniques commonly applied in the health monitoring literature. It was shown that the CUSUM approach can significantly improve the misdetection rate for monitoring gradually developing damages.

Keywords

• structural health monitoring
• principal components analysis
• multivariate cumulative sum
• hotellings t2