Smart Sensor Nodes for Vibration Measurement of Large Civil Infrastructure

Dynamic characteristics of large civil infrastructures have been monitored for safe operation and efficient maintenance of the structures. To measure vibration data, the conventional system uses cables which cause very expensive costs and inconvenience for installation. Therefore, various wireless sensor nodes have been developed to replace the conventional wired system. However, there remain lots of issues to be resolved such as power supply, data loss, data security, etc. In this study, a smart distributed sensor node (SDSN) was incorporated to measure vibration data of large civil infrastructures. The SDSN is basically a timely synchronized one-channel data acquisition system. It consists of local time clock with high accuracy and SD memory card for local data storage. It is designed for temporal measurement, not long-term monitoring, since it can only operate for several hours using embedded batteries. Several applications for large civil infrastructures subjected to harsh environment were carried out. Estimated dynamic characteristics of the structures showed close results of numerical analysis.