Research on framework and condition control for SHM reliability evaluation

Abstract. The structural health monitoring (SHM) reliability evaluation is a key aspect that needs to be urgently addressed to promote the broader application of SHM. However, existing limited studies are mainly based on the non-destructive testing/evaluation (NDT/E) reliability metrics in a straightforward way without a systematic analysis of where these metrics originated from, especially the evaluation conditions which are very important to apply these metrics. In fact, both NDT/E and SHM belong to the instrument and measurement area. Therefore, this paper first performs a systematic analysis of the whole framework of instrument reliability evaluation and condition control. Based on these analyses, considering the special online application scenario of SHM, the overall framework of SHM reliability evaluation and criteria for evaluation condition control are proposed. Finally, the proposed method is demonstrated on crack monitoring reliability evaluation by guided wave-SHM on aircraft structures.