Robust Optimal Experimental Design Accounting for Sensor Failure

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: White, Rebekah, Smith, Chandler, Kouri, Drew, Ritchie, Jace, Aquino, Wilkins, Walsh, Timothy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918449898323968
author White, Rebekah
Smith, Chandler
Kouri, Drew
Ritchie, Jace
Aquino, Wilkins
Walsh, Timothy
author_facet White, Rebekah
Smith, Chandler
Kouri, Drew
Ritchie, Jace
Aquino, Wilkins
Walsh, Timothy
contents Optimal experimental design provides a way of determining a-priori the best locations at which to place accelerometers in vibrations analysis experiments. However, in practice, sensors often fail during experimentation due high mechanical accelerations. There have been limited works exploring the use of robust OED in the context of vibrations analysis, where design spaces (i.e. candidate sensor locations and orientations) are high-dimensional and the finite-element models are expensive to compute. Therefore, this work considers the application of more general robust OED formulations to such a structural dynamics problem. We employ a relaxation-based approach that enables the use of efficient gradient-based optimization. Furthermore, we leverage a binary-inducing penalty during optimization to provide a binary sensor design as an alternative to leveraging post-optimization rounding heuristics. We consider performance metrics based on the log-determinant of the parameter covariance as well those based on parameter and prediction mean-squared errors. We find that although robust and classical designs are similar for the structural dynamics problem of interest, robust designs outperform classical designs on average over relevant failure scenarios of interest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_14497
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust Optimal Experimental Design Accounting for Sensor Failure
White, Rebekah
Smith, Chandler
Kouri, Drew
Ritchie, Jace
Aquino, Wilkins
Walsh, Timothy
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Applications
Optimal experimental design provides a way of determining a-priori the best locations at which to place accelerometers in vibrations analysis experiments. However, in practice, sensors often fail during experimentation due high mechanical accelerations. There have been limited works exploring the use of robust OED in the context of vibrations analysis, where design spaces (i.e. candidate sensor locations and orientations) are high-dimensional and the finite-element models are expensive to compute. Therefore, this work considers the application of more general robust OED formulations to such a structural dynamics problem. We employ a relaxation-based approach that enables the use of efficient gradient-based optimization. Furthermore, we leverage a binary-inducing penalty during optimization to provide a binary sensor design as an alternative to leveraging post-optimization rounding heuristics. We consider performance metrics based on the log-determinant of the parameter covariance as well those based on parameter and prediction mean-squared errors. We find that although robust and classical designs are similar for the structural dynamics problem of interest, robust designs outperform classical designs on average over relevant failure scenarios of interest.
title Robust Optimal Experimental Design Accounting for Sensor Failure
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14497