• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2017

The operation of subway trains induces secondary structure-borne vibrations in the nearby underground spaces. The vibration, along with the associated noise, can cause annoyance and adverse physical, physiological, and psychological effects on humans in dense urban environments. Traditional tethered instruments restrict the rapid measurement and assessment on such vibration effect. This paper presents a novel approach for Wireless Smart Sensor (WSS)-based autonomous evaluation system for the subway train-induced vibrations. The system was implemented on a MEMSIC's Imote2 platform, using a SHM-H high-sensitivity accelerometer board stacked on top. A new embedded application VibrationLevelCalculation, which determines the International Organization for Standardization defined weighted acceleration level, was added into the Illinois Structural Health Monitoring Project Service Toolsuite. The system was verified in a large underground space, where a nearby subway station is a good source of ground excitation caused by the running subway trains. Using an on-board processor, each sensor calculated the distribution of vibration levels within the testing zone, and sent the distribution of vibration level by radio to display it on the central server. Also, the raw time-histories and frequency spectrum were retrieved from the WSS leaf nodes. Subsequently, spectral vibration levels in the one-third octave band, characterizing the vibrating influence of different frequency components on human bodies, was also calculated from each sensor node. Experimental validation demonstrates that the proposed system is efficient for autonomously evaluating the subway train-induced ambient vibration of underground spaces, and the system holds the potential of greatly reducing the laboring of dynamic field testing.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

The only law related to airblast and ground vibration control in Korea is the Noise and Vibration Control Act enforced by the Ministry of Environment. But this law mainly deals with the annoyance aspects of noises and vibrations in ordinary human life. Hence, the law defines the safety criteria of ground vibration as the vibration level (VL) of dB(V) unit. The ground vibrations produced from blasting, however, have the unique characteristics that can be shown in shock vibrations, and the duration is also very short compared to the vibrations from machinery, tools or facilities. Hence, vibration regulations for blasting operations usually define the safety criterion as the peak particle velocity (PPV) considering the effect of ground vibrations to structural damage. Notwithstanding, there are several attempts that predict VL from PPV or estimate VL based on the scaled distances (SD; in unit of $m/kg^{1/2}$ or $m/kg^{1/3}$) without considering their frequency spectra. It appears that these attempts are conducted mainly for the purpose of satisfying the law in blasting contracts. But, in principle there could no correlation between peaks of velocity and acceleration over entire frequency spectrum. Therefore, such correlations or estimations should be conducted only for the waves with the same or very similar frequency spectra.