An energy router for structural monitoring of framed buildings and real-time shutdown of power and gas supply during earthquakes

The paper proposes the integration of structural monitoring with Building Management Systems for electricity and gas distributions. To assess the state of damage of existing buildings the technics of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is adopted. SHM as well as to record the occurrence of sudden structural damage resulting from exceptional events (earthquakes, explosions, shocks and collisions with vehicles, etc.), allows the monitoring of the progressive damage and structural performance under operating conditions through the extraction of the modal parameters of the structure. This approach requires time to process acquired data that, depending on the size of the building and the number of monitored points, varies from minutes to hours. In this paper, an intelligent system is proposed to immediately communicate during an earthquake the overrun of a certain ground shaking threshold so that gas delivery and selected power loads are interrupted, as suggested by current national regulations on structures. The use of low-cost and reduced size accelerometric sensors integrated with Energy Monitoring Systems is proposed in both high-risk earthquake centers and in all “strategic” buildings that must ensure their operation immediately after the earthquake. The procedure for calibrating the horizontal and vertical acceleration threshold is also presented. It is also explicitly required by the existing structural and seismic codes in which electricity and gas distribution systems must be fitted with valves for automatic earthquake disconnection. The present work is also embedded in a long-established research that seeks the obligation for designers to analyze not only the structural aspect of the building, but also all the non-structural elements, including Plant elements.