Section: Research Program
Diagnostics
A further monitoring step, often called fault isolation,
consists in determining which (subsets of) components
of the parameter vector
The question: which (subsets of) components of
In most SHM applications, a complex physical system, characterized by a generally
non identifiable parameter vector
The isolation methods sketched above are possible solutions to the former.
Our approach to the latter diagnosis problem is basically a detection approach again,
and not a (generally ill-posed) inverse problem estimation approach
[3] .
The basic idea is to note that the physical sensitivity matrix writes
It should be clear that the selection of a particular parameterization
As a summary, the machinery in modules 3.2 , 3.3 and 3.4 provides us with a generic framework for designing monitoring algorithms for continuous structures, machines and processes. This approach assumes that a model of the monitored system is available. This is a reasonable assumption within the field of applications since most mechanical processes rely on physical principles which write in terms of equations, providing us with models. These important modeling and parameterization issues are among the questions we intend to investigate within our research program.
The key issue to be addressed within each parametric model class is the residual generation, or equivalently the choice of the parameter estimating function.