IOT Platform for Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is becoming a crucial research topic to improve the human safety and to reduce maintenance costs. However, most of the existing SHM systems face challenges performing at real-time due to environmental effects and different operational hazards. Furthermore, the remote and constant monitoring amenities are not established yet, properly. To overcome this, Internet of Things (IoT) can be used, which would provide flexibility to monitor structures (building, bridge) from anywhere. In this paper, a complete IoT SHM platform is proposed. The platform consists of a Raspberry Pi, an analog to digital converter (ADC) MCP3008, and a Wi-Fi module for wireless communication. Piezoelectric (PZT) sensors were used to collect the data from the structure. The MCP3008 is used as an interface between the PZT sensors and the Raspberry Pi. The raspberry pi performs the necessary calculations to determine the SHM status using a proposed mathematical model to determine the damage’s location and size if any. The All the data is pushed to the Internet filter using Thing Worx platform. The proposed platform is evaluated and tested successfully.