Xiaozhen Zhang

Accurate impact localization on spacecraft structural panels subjected to contact loading by on-orbit servicing robots is critical for real-time structural health monitoring (SHM), yet remains challenging due to heterogeneous elastic wave propagation in complex aluminum structures with stiffener ribs and bonded joints. Conventional Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)-based weighted centroid methods rely on fixed path-loss exponents that cannot accommodate spatially varying wave attenuation, resulting in position-dependent localization errors that worsen significantly near structural discontinuities. This paper proposes a Crow Search Algorithm (CSA)-optimized adaptive weighted centroid algorithm using distributed Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors, featuring three principal innovations: (i) a novel FBG wavelength-shift-to-RSSI amplitude mapping derived from elastic wave attenuation theory, bridging optical fiber sensing with centroid localization; (ii) per-event online weight optimization via CSA that adapts sensor contributions to each individual impact’s strain-wave signature; and (iii) a multi-objective fitness function simultaneously optimizing localization accuracy, noise robustness, and temporal consistency. The proposed method is validated across 200 impact events distributed over five representative positions on a 1 m³ Al6061 satellite-like structure with 64 FBG sensors (8 × 8 grid, 125 mm pitch), under three Gaussian noise levels (σ = 1%, 3%, 5% of signal RMS), and benchmarked against classical weighted centroid (WC), PSO-WC, GA-WC, DE-WC, and GWO-WC using paired t-tests (p < 0.01). CSA-WC achieves a mean localization error of 4.63 mm—an 83.29% improvement over classical WC and the lowest error among all five compared algorithms—with an average computation time of 0.14 s per event, satisfying real-time monitoring requirements.