Correlation Coefficient Based Optimal Vibration Sensor Placement and Number

Vibration sensors are mostly used for fault diagnoses of machines or structures. If more sensors are applied, more accurate fault diagnosis is possible. However, it will obviously cost more. There are many approaches to optimize the number and installation location/point of vibration sensors for more efficient fault diagnosis. Existing methods require a great deal of computational throughput for optimization when considering many mode frequencies with points where vibration sensors are likely to be installed. This paper proposes a practical way of optimizing the sensor installation point considering many mode frequencies with lots of places for sensor installation. FEA was conducted to identify displacement values of each frequency in the candidate points. Then, correlation coefficients were applied to the FEA result to optimize the installation location and number of vibration sensors. Taking into account cases where the number of sensors has been set by users, FIM was applied. The correlation coefficient optimized the candidate points where 24,252 vibration sensors were to be installed and reduced this to 10 points. FIM, which was not suitable for directly optimizing sensor locations because it required a lot of computational throughput and was usually applied to evaluate other methods, is now applicable to candidate points that have been reduced by the correlation coefficient. This paper does not draw the best optimal sensor location but presents a way to apply to large-scale or complicated forms with a little computational throughput.