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This paper presents a reliability-based robust design approach to develop piezoelectric materials based structural sensing systems for failure diagnostics and prognostics. A detectability measure is defined to evaluate the performance of any given sensing system, and the sensing system design problem can be formulated to maximize detectability for different failure modes by optimally allocating piezoelectric materials into a target structure. This formulation can be conveniently solved within a reliability-based robust design framework to ensure design robustness while considering the uncertainties such as those from structure properties and operation conditions. Two case studies, that design sensor networks for an aircraft wing panel and a power transformer structure, are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in developing multifunctional material sensing systems.