VISVESVARAYA TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Jnanasangama, Belgaum- 590018

A SEMINAR 16SEC207S
ON
“EMBEDDED SENSOR WITHIN THE
STRUCTURE”
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the II Semester of M.Tech in Structural Engineering

Submitted by
GEETU G KUMAR
1NT17CSE08

Under the Guidance of

Mr. MAHESH KUMAR CL
Assistant Professor

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

 OVERVIEW
• WHAT IS SENSORS
• WHAT IS HEALTH MONITORING
• WHY MONITOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE
• LITERATURE REVIEW
• TYPES OF SENSORS
• APPLICATIONS OF SENSORS
• POSITIONING OF SENSORS
• CASE STUDY
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCE
WHAT IS SENSORS?

 An embedded sensor network is a network of

embedded computers placed in the physical world
that interacts with the environment.

 An important step in a structural health monitoring

strategy is the appropriate selection of the sensor
used to measure the required physical variable
Structure-monitoring concept uses embedded
sensors that can track stress
WHAT IS HEALTH MONITORING?

 Commonly known as Structural Health Assessment

(SHA) or SHM, this concept is widely applied to
various forms of infrastructures.

 especially as countries all over the world enter into

an even greater period of construction of various
infrastructures ranging from bridges to skyscrapers.
 Especially so when damages to structures are concerned,
it is important to note that there are stages of increasing
difficulty that require the knowledge of previous stages,
namely:

• Detecting the existence of the damage on the structure

• Locating the damage

• Identifying the types of damage

• Quantifying the severity of the damage

Why monitor the infrastructure??

 To validate the structural designs and characterize

performance.
 To assist with infrastructure maintance
 To design appropriate retrofit measures
 Improve seismic risk assessment
 To monitor and control construction process
 To assess load carrying capacities
 Literature review
 Application and development of fiber optic sensors in civil
engineering

• An overview is presented of our research towards the development of structurally

fiber optic sensors.

• This demonstrates that fiber optic sensors show high sensitivity and accuracy in
strain, stress, temperature measurement in several structures.

• In this research, several examples have been shown in which strain, stress and
temperature have been determined for structural elements.

• It is concluded that the fiber optic sensors can be successfully used for accuracy of
structures and determination of quantity of parameters.
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 Literature review…………..

 Fibre optic sensors for the structural health

monitoring of building Structures

• In this work different fibre optic sensors for the structural health monitoring of civil
engineering structures are reported.

• A fibre optic crack sensor and two different fibre optic moisture sensors have been
designed to detect the moisture ingress in concrete based building structures.

• The advantage of a fibre optic SHM sensor system is demonstrated based on

monitoring the structural health of a sewerage tunnel in future application also
fibre optic sensors such as humidity and/or strain sensors will be applied along the
pipes in order to provide a distributed sewerage tunnel SHM system.

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 Literature review…………..

 Structural health monitoring system – an embedded

sensor approach
• It encompasses damage detection, identification and prevention of structures
from natural disasters like earth quake and rain.

• This paper is mainly proposed for three modules. This paper also proposes to
overcome the general issue arises in structural health monitoring system.

• Vibration analysis method is used to predict the initial stage of an earth quake.

• Damage detection present monitoring and identifying the damage in the

structures.

• To reduce the power consumption in the particular building, a new smart

auditorium is designed.
 Literature review……..

 Smart Sensing Technologies for Structural Health Monitoring

of Civil Engineering Structures

• In this paper, the application of smart materials/sensors for the SHM of civil
engineering structures is critically reviewed.

• The major focus is on the evaluations of laboratory and field studies of smart
materials/sensors in civil engineering.

• Various applications of FOS in civil engineering structures, such as monitoring

of strain, displacement, vibration, cracks, corrosion, and chloride ion
concentration, have been developed.

• However, further studies have to be carried out to verify the feasibility of this
method to detect various defects in real concrete structures and reinforced
concrete structures.
 TYPES OF SENSORS
1. Fiber optic sensors (FOS)s
Monitoring of strain and displacement
Detection of defect

2. Piezoelectric sensors
Electrical impedance- based SHM method
Elastic wave-based SHM method

3. Self- diagnosing fiber reinforced composites

4. Magnetostrictive sensor
 APPLICATIONS OF SENSORS
1.Fiber optic sensors (FOS)s
FOS are generally surface mounted on existing structures, or embedded in
newly constructed civil structures, including bridges, buildings, and dams, to
yield information about strain (static and dynamic), temperature, defects
(delamination, cracks and corrosion), and concentration of chloride ions. The
obtained data can be used to evaluate the safety of both new-built structures
and repaired structures, and diagnose location and degree of damages.

2. Piezoelectric sensors
There are various types of piezoelectric materials: piezoelectric ceramics,
piezoelectric polymers, and piezoelectric composites. More recently,
piezoelectric sensors were introduced into SHM of civil engineering structures
as an active sensing technology based on the measurement of electrical
impedance and elastic waves
 Fiber optic sensors
(FOS)s

Piezoelectric
sensors
3. Self- diagnosing fiber reinforced
composites
Self-diagnosing (or self-monitoring) fibre reinforced composites contain an
electrical conductive phase such as carbon fibre and conductive powder in
the cement or polymer matrix. They have the abilities to monitor their
own strain, damage, and temperature.

4. Magnetostrictive sensor

Ferromagnetic materials have the properties that, when placed in a

magnetic field, they are mechanically deformed. This phenomenon is
called the magnetostrictive effect. Based on these phenomena, a type of
magnetostrictive sensor (MsS) which could generate and detect guided
waves in the ferromagnetic materials under testing without direct physical
contact to the material surface.
 Self- diagnosing fiber
reinforced composites

Magnetostrictive sensor
 POSITIONING OF SENSORS
• A structural health monitoring system consists of permanently installed sensors to
collect structural information, and these sensors are required to be placed at ‘good’
positions for damage identification. Conventional sensor placement methods make
use of dynamic characteristics of a structure, i.e., mode shapes and natural
frequencies, to determine optimal sensor positions.

• The visual inspection method is the simplest among the sensor placement
methodologies proposed for dynamic testing

• Though practical for some simple structures tested in laboratory, the visual
inspection method encounters great difficulties in large complicated structures in
.
structural health monitoring since it is not obvious to judge where a structure has
large vibration amplitudes just by visual inspection
 CASE STUDY
Fibre optic sensors for the structural
health monitoring of building Structures
 In this work different fibre optic sensors for the structural health monitoring
of civil engineering structures are reported

 A fibre optic crack sensor and two different fibre optic moisture sensors have
been designed to detect the moisture ingress in concrete based building
structures.

 Moreover, the degeneration of the mechanical properties of optical glass fibre

sensors and hence their long-term stability and reliability due to the
mechanical and chemical impact of the concrete environment is discussed as
well as the advantage of applying a fibre optic sensor system for the structural
health monitoring of sewerage tunnels is demonstrated.
 Fibre optic moisture sensors
• In order to detect the moisture ingress into building structures two different
fibre optic humidity sensors have been developed. A swellable polymeric fibre
optic sensor has been designed for the distributed moisture monitoring.

• A single-point relative humidity (RH) fibre optic sensor based on a polyimide

coated Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor has been created.

Distributed moisture sensing

The sensor consists :
• polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel rod,
• optical single-mode (SM) fibre,
• device to cause micro bending of the
fibre
• protective felt wick.
Fig. 4.2.1. Schematic (a) and picture (b) of the developed fibre optic swellable
polymeric sensor for the distributed moisture monitoring. Response of the sensor
when exposure to water and dried at room temperature (c).
 Single-point humidity sensing
• The fibre optic single-point humidity sensor has been fabricated by
inscribing two FBGs in a photosensitive optical glass fibre using a KrF
excimer laser and the phase mask technique.
• Following this, one FBG was coated with polyimide by applying the dip
coating technique.
• Furthermore, an appropriate sensor packaging has been designed in order
to protect the fibre optic single-point humidity sensor from deleterious
environmental effects.
 Fibre optic crack sensor

• The developed fibre optic crack sensor is based on textile net structure
with an integrated optical SM fibre.
• The performance was evaluated by embedding the textile based fibre
optic crack sensor into a concrete block with dimensions of 100 cm x 15
cm x 15 cm and cracking the fabricated concrete element after curing at
a defined location by applying a load using the three point flexural test
 Application example: SHM of sewerage tunnels
using fibre optic sensors

• Sewerage tunnels can be damaged due to excessive loading caused by

obstructions, corrosion, displacement, mechanical pressure or the
penetration of plant roots, for example.
• Therefore, it is essential to provide improved SHM systems for sewerage
tunnels in order to be able to predict such events before they occur and
thus minimizing economic losses as a result.
• The most common SHM technique of sewerage tunnels is a remote
inspection using a video camera-based system.
• However, this technique only allows for an inspection of the tunnel at
regular intervals,and the necessity for cleaning of the tunnel beforehand,
which is expensive and time-consuming.
• Therefore, due to the inherent advantages of fibre optic sensors
 Fibre optic sensor system for the SHM of sewerage tunnels. Installing fibre
optic humidity sensors (a) and fibre optic tilt sensors and fibre optic splitters
for sensor multiplexing on the top of the sewerage pipe (b).

• Fibre optic humidity and fibre optic tilt sensors.

• Both kinds of sensors are located at the interface between two
sewerage pipes.
• At each interface two tilt sensors are applied to detect a tunnel
misalignment and the humidity sensors are utilized to detect the
resulting water outlet
• The measured temperature values verify that both humidity sensors
withstand the installing of the sewerage tunnel and are operating
properly.
• Furthermore, the results indicate that the sewerage tunnel is operating
well. Currently, long-term measurements are performed.
 Summary
• In order to detect the moisture ingress into concrete based civil engineering
structures two different fibre optic humidity sensors and a fibre optic crack
sensor have been developed.
• A swellable polymeric fibre optic sensor has been designed for the distributed
moisture monitoring and is based basically on a polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel rod,
an optical SM fibre and a micro bending device.
• The current implementation of the fibre optic sewerage tunnel SHM system is
only able to monitor the structural health at the interfaces between two
sewerage pipes.
• Since the fibre optic sensors are applied outside the sewerage tunnel, they are
only capable to detect physical damages.
• However, in a future version of the sensor system with increased sensitivity and
optimized sensor placement it might be possible to follow the evolution of cracks
including micro-cracks to predict the onset of damage.
 CONCLUSION

 Smart materials/sensors are a new development with enormous potential for

SHM of civil engineering structures. Some of them are currently being applied in
the field, while others are being evaluated under laboratory conditions.
 FOS are versatile sensors for SHM applications in civil engineering. Various
applications of FOS in civil engineering structures, such as monitoring of strain,
displacement, vibration, cracks, corrosion, and chloride ion concentration, have
been developed
 SHM system must possess the comprehensive abilities to detect positions and
severity of damages. That is, some damages within structures can be monitored
directly using data from sensors, while others can only be detected indirectly
through special diagnostic methods.
 civil engineering structures are usually very large. So, many sensors are equipped
to make structures sense their health conditions.
 REFERENCE
1. S.F.Masri, M.S.Agbabian, A.M.Abdel-Ghaffar, M.Higazy, R.O.Claus, M.J.de.Vries
“ Experimental study of embedded fiber-optic strain gauges in concrete structure”
journal of engineering mechanics, ASCE (1994)
2. Amit sethi “ Structural health monitoring of steel structures using electrical strain
gauges” Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (2006)
3. M. Mahdikhani, Z. Bayati “application and development of fiber optic sensors in
civil engineering” World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (2008)
4. M. Sun, W. J. Staszewski, and R. N. Swamy “Smart Sensing Technologies for
Structural Health Monitoring of Civil Engineering Structures” Hindawi Publishing
Corporation (2010)
5. Dhivya. A, Hemalatha. M “structural health monitoring system – an embedded
sensor
approach” International Journal of Engineering and Technology (IJET) (2013)
6. Mehdi Modares, A.M.ASCE; and Natalie Waksmanski, S.M.ASCE “Overview of Structural
Health Monitoring for Steel Bridges” practice periodical on structural design and
construction, ASCE (2013)
7. Stefan Bosseab, Armin Lechleiter “Structural Health and Load Monitoring with Material-
embedded-Sensor Networks and Self-organizing Multi-Agent Systems” ScienceDirect
(2014)
8. Rama Mohan Rao, K. Lakshmi, and S. Krishnakumar “A Generalized Optimal Sensor
Placement Technique for Structural Health Monitoring and System Identification”
ScienceDirect (2014)
9. Ramzi Shaladi, Faesal Alatshan, Chunhui Yang “An overview on the applications of
structural health monitoring using wireless sensor networks in bridge engineering” lntl conf.
on advances in science, Engg., Technology and Natural Resources (2015)
10. K. Bremera,, M. Wollwebera, F. Weigandb, M. Rahlvesa, M. Kuhnec, R. Helbigb,
B. Rotha “Fibre optic sensors for the structural health monitoring of building
Structures” ScienceDirect (2016)