Rapid structural condition assessment using radio frequency identification (RFID) based wireless strain sensor

Abstract This paper presents a wireless structural condition scanning system that utilizes the building information modeling (BIM) and radio frequency identification (RFID) based wireless strain sensor technologies to enable non-contact scanning of structural deformation. In buildings, structural members are often hidden behind drywalls, and thus buckling or yielding in steel members are difficult to detect, often requiring removal of coverings and thus time consuming and costly. Fast and accurate assessment of structural conditions is important to the occupant safety and uninterrupted use after extreme load events such as strong earthquakes. BIM can integrate all types of structural and condition assessment information collected in the life cycle of civil structures and also provides the visual data displaying mechanism that makes the structural health monitoring information easily understandable and actionable. Breakage-triggered (BT) strain sensor that uses RFID tag for non-contact scanning of structural deformation condition has been developed to detect the surpass of pre-set strain threshold corresponding to structural damage conditions such as yielding or buckling. This system can rapidly identify the spot where the pre-set strain threshold has been surpassed and the corresponding structural element in the BIM model would be highlighted to provide alert signal to engineers and decision makers.