How to Implement IoT in Structural Health Monitoring Systems?

Published on 19 May 2022. Written by Reddy Shekar

Maintenance is the paramount thing to focus, after constructing any structure. It is necessary to maintain the design strength of structure to increase life span.

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Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a process, which used to find the safety of the structure. Internet of Things (IoT) is the emerging technology, using in SHM system.

Structural health monitoring is a continuous process of finding safety and soundness status of existing structures. It also helps to find alternative solutions to ensure the safety of structures against early failures. This system use sensors to collect and analyze the various characteristics of the structure. The collected data used to avoid any damage or failure of structure that may occur in its life span. This system used for mass structures such as bridges, skyscrapers, airports, dams, stadiums, tunnels and many others.

There are many techniques available to perform structural health monitoring such as,

1. Wired technique
2. Electro-Mechanical impedance method
3. Data fusion technique
4. Vibration control technique
5. Smart wireless technique

All these techniques are different from one another by cost, purpose, quality and technology factors. They also use different types of structural health monitoring devices to collect data. And use different software to analyze the collected data.

About the Internet of Things (IoT) technology:

Internet of Things is a smart wireless technique which is using in different types of industries. IoT has a wide range of applications in the civil engineering field. Structural health monitoring is one of the best application to achieve. IoT used to measure the various parameters of structures like a stain, crack width, vibration, moisture, and others.

In the case of vibration analysis, structural vibration measured by using sensors. The data will be used to recognize and alert the abnormal vibration of the structure.

Kits required:

1. Hardware requirements: - The hardware unit consists of various sensors, microcontroller, and a Wi-Fi module. Different types of sensors used to measure various parameters of the structure. Ex: - Accelerometer used to measure the abnormal vibration of the building. Strain gauge used for measuring strain and deflection of the beam. Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board, used to collect data from sensors. Wi-Fi module allows micro-controller to connect to a Wi-Fi network.
2. Software requirements:- The Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) creates a platform to write the code for the Arduino board. The visual video is also used to develop desktop applications and web applications.

How it works:

1. Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept of collecting data using sensors and share the collected data using the internet.
2. Middleware (internet-oriented), sensors (things-oriented) and knowledge (sematic-oriented) are the three important components in IoT technology.
3. Sensors include Arduino Uno and Wi-Fi module which collects, process and transfer data.
4. Then processed and stored data accessed by users to find the required information.
5. Various types of softwares used to analyze and manipulate the sensed data. Ex:- MATLAB.

Conclusion:

The advancement in technology making the structural health monitoring process much easier and simple. Internet of Things is one of that technology is helping to achieve these factors in very less time.

Kit required to develop How to Implement IoT in Structural Health Monitoring Systems?:

• Accelerometer
• Strain gauge
• Arduino Uno

Technologies you will learn by working on How to Implement IoT in Structural Health Monitoring Systems?:

• Structural Engineering
• Iot

Any Questions?