Sensor Informativeness, Identifiability, and Uncertainty in Bayesian Inverse Problems for Structural Health Monitoring

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Hauptverfasser: Bakeer, Tammam, Herbers, Max, Marx, Steffen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Bakeer, Tammam
Herbers, Max
Marx, Steffen
author_facet Bakeer, Tammam
Herbers, Max
Marx, Steffen
contents In Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), the recovery of distributed mechanical parameters from sparse data is often ill-posed, raising critical questions about identifiability and the reliability of inferred states. While deterministic regularization methods such as Tikhonov stabilise the inversion, they provide little insight into the spatial limits of resolution or the inherent uncertainty of the solution. This paper presents a Bayesian inverse framework that rigorously quantifies these limits, using the identification of distributed flexural rigidity from rotation (tilt) influence lines as a primary case study. Fisher information is employed as a diagnostic metric to quantify sensor informativeness, revealing how specific sensor layouts and load paths constrain the recoverable spatial features of the parameter field. The methodology is applied to the full-scale openLAB research bridge (TU Dresden) using data from controlled vehicle passages. Beyond estimating the flexural rigidity profile, the Bayesian formulation produces credible intervals that expose regions of practical non-identifiability, which deterministic methods may obscure. The results demonstrate that while the measurement data carry high information content for the target parameters, their utility is spatially heterogeneous and strictly bounded by the experiment design. The proposed framework unifies identification with uncertainty quantification, providing a rigorous basis for optimising sensor placement and interpreting the credibility of SHM diagnostics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_16628
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sensor Informativeness, Identifiability, and Uncertainty in Bayesian Inverse Problems for Structural Health Monitoring
Bakeer, Tammam
Herbers, Max
Marx, Steffen
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Applications
In Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), the recovery of distributed mechanical parameters from sparse data is often ill-posed, raising critical questions about identifiability and the reliability of inferred states. While deterministic regularization methods such as Tikhonov stabilise the inversion, they provide little insight into the spatial limits of resolution or the inherent uncertainty of the solution. This paper presents a Bayesian inverse framework that rigorously quantifies these limits, using the identification of distributed flexural rigidity from rotation (tilt) influence lines as a primary case study. Fisher information is employed as a diagnostic metric to quantify sensor informativeness, revealing how specific sensor layouts and load paths constrain the recoverable spatial features of the parameter field. The methodology is applied to the full-scale openLAB research bridge (TU Dresden) using data from controlled vehicle passages. Beyond estimating the flexural rigidity profile, the Bayesian formulation produces credible intervals that expose regions of practical non-identifiability, which deterministic methods may obscure. The results demonstrate that while the measurement data carry high information content for the target parameters, their utility is spatially heterogeneous and strictly bounded by the experiment design. The proposed framework unifies identification with uncertainty quantification, providing a rigorous basis for optimising sensor placement and interpreting the credibility of SHM diagnostics.
title Sensor Informativeness, Identifiability, and Uncertainty in Bayesian Inverse Problems for Structural Health Monitoring
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.16628