It has been shown that guided waves can be used with sparse arrays of permanently attached sensors to detect the presence of damage in structures. When applied with temperature compensation strategies complex structures can be inspected over time and in the presence of varying conditions. Current analysis suggests a series of relationships for individual sensor pairs but is difficult to expand to predict the signal to noise performance of a real world large network of sensors. The result of this is that it is unclear as to what is the best sensor layout to detect damage. This paper quantitatively and qualitatively investigates the performance of different sensor geometries to determine the signal to noise ratio of different configurations. It is shown that using more than two sensors not only offers the ability to localize damage but also produces enhanced signal to noise ratio over a single pair of transducers. It is shown that there is no single optimum sensor layout, with the optimum layout dependant on the type of damage that is to be detected. However a network of squares or hexagons offers excellent performance.
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