Structural Health Monitoring System with the Latest Information Technologies

Over the past decade, a variety of information technologies have been under development in the computer science and electrical engineering fields that have transformed all facets of our society. Adoption of these transformative information technologies for monitoring complex civil infrastructure systems can lead to safer structures that are easier to manage over their operational lives. Foremost among the information technologies explored for structural health monitoring are wireless sensors. Wireless sensors are low-cost data acquisition nodes that collocate communication and computing functionality with the sensor transducer. The result are low-cost structural monitoring systems defined by high nodal densities. To offer a scalable approach to management of the large data sets offered by wireless monitoring systems, in-network computing by the wireless sensor network is a powerful approach to automation of interrogation of structural response data for signs of structural distress. In addition, cyberinfrastructure tools are offered to provide anywhere-anytime access to response data collected by the wireless monitoring system. This paper will present the authors’ experiences with the research and development of wireless sensors designed explicitly for structural health monitoring of civil engineering structures. Recent field deployments of wireless sensor networks are described so as to illustrate the reliability and precision of the current generation of wireless sensors currently available.