Electronic Sensory System for Structural Health Monitoring Applications

In this paper an electronic sensory system for structural health monitoring applications is presented. The proposed system is composed of a master device and communication nodes placed on the monitored structure. Each node is made up of a digital triaxial accelerometer, an external memory and a microcontroller that acquires the values and stores them in the memory. The master device has the task of synchronizing the nodes with a general clock to acquire the samples at the same time. All the nodes collect the data taken from on-board memory through RS485 communication to the master device. Experimental results show that the system is able to monitor the structure with data synchronization from each node. The aim of this work is to develop a precise, reliable, but also inexpensive system that allows the structures to be monitored continuously.