Probability of Detection Considerations for a Lamb Wave Structural Health Monitoring Sensor

Structural health management is the process of making informed decisions about the maintenance needs and timing of an asset based on an assessment provided by a built-in intelligent health monitoring system. One of the largest challenges in implementing such a system is achieving the necessary accuracy and reliability in the damage assessment data. Here we present a damage detection system based on synthetically focused ultrasonic Lamb waves. To evaluate the system efficacy we review approaches to determining system capability including models for defining the Probability of Detection (POD) and Probability of False Indication (PFI).