A Study on Cable Tension Estimation Using Smartphone Built-in Accelerometer and Camera

Estimation of cable tension through proper measurements is one of the essential tasks in evaluating the safety of cable structures. In this paper, a study on cable tension estimation using the built-in accelerometer and camera in a smartphone was conducted. For the experimental study, visual displacement measurement using a smartphone camera and acceleration measurement using a built-in accelerometer were performed in the cable-stayed bridge model. The estimated natural frequencies and transformed tensions from these measurements were compared with the theoretical values and results from the normal visual displacement method. Through comparison, it can be seen that the error between the method using the smartphone and the normal visual displacement is sufficiently small to be acceptable. It has also been shown that those errors are much smaller than the difference between the values calculated by the theoretical model. These results show that the deviation according to the type of measurement method is not large and it is rather important to use an appropriate mathematical model. In conclusion, in the case of cable tension estimation, it can be said that the visual displacement measurement and acceleration using a smartphone can be a sufficiently applicable method, just like the normal visual displacement method. It is also noteworthy that the smartphone accelerometer has a larger magnitude error and has more limitations such as high-frequency sampling instability compared to the visual displacement method, but shows almost the same performance as the visual displacement method in this cable tension estimation.

스마트폰 내장 가속도계와 카메라를 이용한 케이블 장력 추정에 관한 연구