Structural damage detection using wireless sensor-actuator networks

Structural health monitoring (SMI) is a well-established multi-disciplinary research field, in which the goal is to develop technologies and techniques to automatically detect, localize, and classify damage in large structures. This paper is focused, starting with a simple SHM problem and a simple structure, on how wireless sensor networking technologies can help advance SHM. Specifically, a distributed damage detection algorithm is developed based on shifted spectra of reponse at the sensor nodes. While damage detection using frequency shifts is fairly well-understood in the SHM community, the development here adheres to sensor network architectural principles: the technique is amenable to in-network processing and duty-cycling, and can be implemented on a long-running sensor network. The efficacy is demonstrated using simulations on structural models, and actual measurements on real, albeit simple, structures.