Structural Health Monitoring: An IoT Sensor System for Structural Damage Indicator Evaluation

Abstract

In the last decades, the applications of structural monitoring are moving toward the field of civil engineering and infrastructures. Nevertheless, if the structures have damages, it does not mean that they have a complete loss of functionality, but rather that the system is no longer in an optimal condition so that, if the damage increases, the structure can collapse. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), a process for the identification of damage, periodically collects data from suitable sensors that allow to characterize the damage and establishes the health status of the structure. Therefore, this monitoring will provide information on the structure condition, mostly about its integrity, in a short time, and, for infrastructures and civil structures, it is necessary to assess performance and health status. The aim of this work is to design an Internet of Things (IoT) system for Structural Health Monitoring to find possible damages and to see how the structure behaves over time. For this purpose, a customized datalogger and nodes have been designed. The datalogger is able to acquire the data coming from the nodes through RS485 communication and synchronize acquisitions. Furthermore, it has an internal memory to allow for the post-processing of the collected data. The nodes are composed of a digital triaxial accelerometer, a general-purpose microcontroller, and an external memory for storage measures. The microcontroller communicates with an accelerometer, acquires values, and then saves them in the memory. The system has been characterized and the damage indicator has been evaluated on a testing structure. Experimental results show that the estimated damage indicator increases when the structure is perturbed. In the present work, the damage indicator increased by a maximum value of 24.65 when the structure is perturbed by a 2.5 mm engraving.

Ultrasonic Guided-Waves Sensors and Integrated Structural Health Monitoring Systems for Impact Detection and Localization: A Review

“…In fact, for the SHM system, the typical accuracy that is needed between the node is in the range [0.6, 9.0] μs. Muttillo et al [ 153 ] presented a solution for structural monitoring with digital accelerometers ADXL355 with high resolution that was connected to hardware for IoT connection. A high synchronization between the sensors was implemented to preserve such performance.…”

Ultrasonic Guided-Waves Sensors and Integrated Structural Health Monitoring Systems for Impact Detection and Localization: A Review

“…In fact, for the SHM system, the typical accuracy that is needed between the node is in the range [0.6, 9.0] µs. Muttillo et al [153] presented a solution for structural monitoring with digital accelerometers ADXL355 with high resolution that was connected to hardware for IoT connection. A high synchronization between the sensors was implemented to preserve such performance.…”

Integration with 3D Visualization and IoT-Based Sensors for Real-Time Structural Health Monitoring

“…Sony and Sadhu [18] used various numerical simulations to validate the synchrosqueezing transform (SST) for progressive damage assessment. In applying IoT in the SHM, Muttillo et al [19] built an IoT sensor system that integrated ADXL355 sensors, a Same3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, and a personal computer via a RS485 communication bus. Their suggested system evaluated the damage indicator but does not send monitoring data wirelessly to a server on the internet.…”