scholarly journals A Low-Cost Phase-OTDR System for Structural Health Monitoring: Design and Instrumentation

Instruments ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filograno ◽  
Riziotis ◽  
Kandyla

The design, development, and testing of a low-cost phase optical time-domain reflectometry (Phase-OTDR) system, intended for use in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications, are presented. Phase-OTDR is a technology that is growing and evolving at an impressive rate. Systems based on this principle are becoming very sensitive and elaborate and can perform very accurate condition monitoring, but at the same time, they are critically alignment-dependent and prohibitively costly to be considered as viable options in real field applications. Certain Phase-OTDR systems have been applied in real field studies, but these examples are mostly a proof-of-concept. The system presented here is the result of a compromise between performance and cost, using commercial components, specifically combined and tuned for SHM applications. The design and implementation of all the electronic and optoelectronic steps are presented, and the operation of the system is demonstrated, achieving a spatial resolution of ~6 m over 5 km. This work provides useful engineering guidelines for the low-cost implementation of Phase-OTDR systems. It is anticipated that the affordable development of such interrogation systems will promote their use in a wide range of SHM applications with moderate monitoring requirements and will assist the penetration of Phase-OTDR technology in the industry.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Juan J. Villacorta ◽  
Lara del-Val ◽  
Roberto D. Martínez ◽  
José-Antonio Balmori ◽  
Álvaro Magdaleno ◽  
...  

This paper presents the design, development and testing of a low-cost Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system based on MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) triaxial accelerometers. A new control system composed by a myRIO platform, managed by specific LabVIEW software, has been developed. The LabVIEW software also computes the frequency response functions for the subsequent modal analysis. The proposed SHM system was validated by comparing the data measured by this set-up with a conventional SHM system based on piezoelectric accelerometers. After carrying out some validation tests, a high correlation can be appreciated in the behavior of both systems, being possible to conclude that the proposed system is sufficiently accurate and sensitive for operative purposes, apart from being significantly more affordable than the traditional one.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 4312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunzhu Chen ◽  
Xingwei Xue

With the rapid development of the world’s transportation infrastructure, many long-span bridges were constructed in recent years, especially in China. However, these bridges are easily subjected to various damages due to dynamic loads (such as wind-, earthquake-, and vehicle-induced vibration) or environmental factors (such as corrosion). Therefore, structural health monitoring (SHM) is vital to guarantee the safety of bridges in their service lives. With its wide frequency response range, fast response, simple preparation process, ease of processing, low cost, and other advantages, the piezoelectric transducer is commonly employed for the SHM of bridges. This paper summarizes the application of piezoelectric materials for the SHM of bridges, including the monitoring of the concrete strength, bolt looseness, steel corrosion, and grouting density. For each problem, the application of piezoelectric materials in different research methods is described. The related data processing methods for four types of bridge detection are briefly summarized, and the principles of each method in practical application are listed. Finally, issues to be studied when using piezoelectric materials for monitoring are discussed, and future application prospects and development directions are presented.


Author(s):  
Milton Muñoz ◽  
Remigio Guevara ◽  
Santiago González ◽  
Juan Carlos Jiménez

This paper presents and evaluates a continuous recording system designed for a low-cost seismic station. The architecture has three main blocks. An accelerometer sensor based on MEMS technology (Microelectromechanical Systems), an SBC platform (Single Board Computer) with embedded Linux and a microcontroller device. In particular, the microcontroller represents the central component which operates as an intermediate agent to manage the communication between the accelerometer and the SBC block. This strategy allows the system for data acquisition in real time. On the other hand, the SBC platform is used for storing and processing data as well as in order to configure the remote communication with the station. This proposal is intended as a robust solution for structural health monitoring (i.e. in order to characterize the response of an infrastructure before, during and after a seismic event). The paper details the communication scheme between the system components, which has been minutely designed to ensure the samples are collected without information loss. Furthermore, for the experimental evaluation the station was located in the facilities on a relevant infrastructure, specifically a hydroelectric dam. The system operation was compared and verified with respect to a certified accelerograph station. Results prove that the continuous recording system operates successfully and allows for detecting seismic events according to requirements of structural health applications (i.e. detects events with a frequency of vibration less than 100 Hz). Specifically, through the system implemented it was possible to characterize the effect of a seismic event of 4 MD reported by the regional seismology network and with epicenter located about 30 Km of the hydroelectric dam. Particularly, the vibration frequencies detected on the infrastructure are in the range of 13 Hz and 29 Hz. Regarding the station performance, results from experiments reveals an average CPU load of 51%, consequently the processes configured on the SBC platform do not involve an overload. Finally, the average energy consumption of the station is close to 2.4 W, therefore autonomy provided by the backup system is aroud of 10 hours.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Mesquita ◽  
P. Antunes ◽  
A. A. Henriques ◽  
A. Arêde ◽  
P. S. André ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Optical systems are recognized to be an important tool for structural health monitoring, especially for real time safety assessment, due to simplified system configuration and low cost when compared to regular systems, namely electrical systems. This work aims to present a case study on structural health monitoring focused on reliability assessment and applying data collected by a simplified optical sensing system. This way, an elevated reinforced concrete water reservoir was instrumented with a bi-axial optical accelerometer and monitored since January 2014. Taking into account acceleration data, the natural frequencies and relative displacements were estimated. The reliability analysis was performed based on generalized extreme values distribution (GEV) and the results were employed to build a forecast of the reliability of the water elevated reservoir for the next 100 years. The results showed that the optical system combined with GEV analysis, implemented in this experimental work, can provide adequate data for structural reliability assessment.


Author(s):  
Howard A. Winston ◽  
Fanping Sun ◽  
Balkrishna S. Annigeri

A technology for non-intrusive real-time structural health monitoring using piezoelectric active sensors is presented. The approach is based on monitoring variations of the coupled electromechanical impedance of piezoelectric patches bonded to metallic structures in high-frequency bands. In each of these applications, a single piezoelectric element is used as both an actuator and a sensor. The resulting electromechanical coupling makes the frequency-dependent electric impedance spectrum of the PZT sensor a good mapping of the underlying structure’s acoustic signature. Moreover, incipient structural damage can be indicated by deviations of this signature from its original baseline pattern. Unique features of this technology include its high sensitivity to structural damage, non-intrusiveness to the host structure, and low cost of implementation. These features have potential for enabling on-board damage monitoring of critical or inaccessible aerospace structures and components, such as aircraft wing joints, and both internal and external jet engine components. Several exploratory applications will be discussed.


Author(s):  
Nicolas Manzini ◽  
Andre Orcesi ◽  
Antoine Clément ◽  
Miguel Ortiz ◽  
John Dumoulin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Zonzini ◽  
Francesca Romano ◽  
Antonio Carbone ◽  
Matteo Zauli ◽  
Luca De Marchi

Abstract Despite the outstanding improvements achieved by artificial intelligence in the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) field, some challenges need to be coped with. Among them, the necessity to reduce the complexity of the models and the data-to-user latency time which are still affecting state-of-the-art solutions. This is due to the continuous forwarding of a huge amount of data to centralized servers, where the inference process is usually executed in a bulky manner. Conversely, the emerging field of Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML), promoted by the recent advancements by the electronic and information engineering community, made sensor-near data inference a tangible, low-cost and computationally efficient alternative. In line with this observation, this work explored the embodiment of the One Class Classifier Neural Network, i.e., a neural network architecture solving binary classification problems for vibration-based SHM scenarios, into a resource-constrained device. To this end, OCCNN has been ported on the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense platform and validated with experimental data from the Z24 bridge use case, reaching an average accuracy and precision of 95% and 94%, respectively.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (CICMT) ◽  
pp. 000020-000025
Author(s):  
Hélène DEBEDA ◽  
Riadh LAKHMI ◽  
Isabelle FAVRE ◽  
Jonathan ARGILLOS ◽  
Mario MAGLIONE ◽  
...  

Using the association of the low-cost screen-printing technology with the sacrificial layer method, the feasibility of totally released piezoelectric thick-films microceramics of gold electroded PZT type is studied. After the deposition of the sacrificial layer on an alumina substrate and subsequent printing and drying of gold, PZT and gold layers, the final firing is performed at low temperature. This is followed by the releasing step of the Au/PZT/Au in diluted acidic solution. Impedance analysis shows that the electrical properties and electromechanical coefficients of poled PZT thick-films are still lower than those of PZT ceramics. This result is correlated to the high porosity rate of the PZT layer. However these piezoelectric microceramics present a good electromechanical behaviour and can be used as sensors when solicited by vibrations or as actuators to generate vibrations in a structure on which they are bonded. Moreover, the successful fabrication associated to a good electromechanical signature on a metallic test structure suggests Structural Health Monitoring applications.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Reiser ◽  
Brandon Runnels ◽  
Chris White ◽  
Abraham Light-Marquez ◽  
Andrei Zagrai ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
David Siler ◽  
Ben Cooper ◽  
Chris White ◽  
Stephen Marinsek ◽  
Andrei Zagrai ◽  
...  

The paper presents the design, development, and assembly of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) experiments intended to be launch in space on a sub-orbital rocket flight as well as a high altitude balloon flight. The experiments designed investigate the use of both piezoelectric sensing hardware in a wave propagation experiment and piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) in an electromechanical impedance experiment as active elements of spacecraft SHM systems. The list of PWAS experiments includes a bolted-joint test and an experiment to monitor PWAS condition during spaceflight. Electromechanical impedances of piezoelectric sensors will be recorded in-flight at varying input frequencies using an onboard data acquisition system. The wave propagation experiment will utilize the sensing hardware of the Metis Design MD7 Digital SHM system. The payload will employ a triggering system that will begin experiment data acquisition upon sufficient saturation of g-loading. The experiment designs must be able to withstand the harsh environment of space, intense vibrations from the rocket launch, and large shock loading upon re-entry. The paper discusses issues encountered during design, development, and assembly of the payload and aspects central to successful demonstration of the SHM system during both the sub-orbital space flight and balloon launch.


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