• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.209-228
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• 2012

Structural health monitoring with wireless sensor networks has received much attention in recent years due to the ease of sensor installation and low deployment and maintenance costs. However, sensor network technology needs to solve numerous challenges in order to substitute conventional systems: large amounts of data, remote configuration of measurement parameters, on-site calibration of sensors and robust networking functionality for long-term deployments. We present a structural health monitoring network that addresses these challenges and is used in several deployments for monitoring of bridges and buildings. Our system supports a diverse set of sensors, a library of highly optimized processing algorithms and a lightweight solution to support a wide range of network runtime configurations. This allows flexible partitioning of the application between the sensor network and the backend software. We present an analysis of this partitioning and evaluate the performance of our system in three experimental network deployments on civil structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2003

Complementing recent advances made in the field of structural health monitoring and damage detection, the concept of a wireless sensing network with distributed computational power is proposed. The fundamental building block of the proposed sensing network is a wireless sensing unit capable of acquiring measurement data, interrogating the data and transmitting the data in real time. The computational core of a prototype wireless sensing unit can potentially be utilized for execution of embedded engineering analyses such as damage detection and system identification. To illustrate the computational capabilities of the proposed wireless sensing unit, the fast Fourier transform and auto-regressive time-series modeling are locally executed by the unit. Fast Fourier transforms and auto-regressive models are two important techniques that have been previously used for the identification of damage in structural systems. Their embedment illustrates the computational capabilities of the prototype wireless sensing unit and suggests strong potential for unit installation in automated structural health monitoring systems.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.255-268
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• 2019

Civil infrastructures, such as bridges and tunnels are most important assets and their failure during service will have significant economic and social impact in any country. Behavior of a bridge can be evaluated only through actual monitoring/measurements of bridge members under the loads of interest. Theoretical analysis alone is not a good predictor of the ability of a bridge. In some cases, theoretical analyses can give less effect than actual since theoretical analyses do not consider the actual condition of the bridge, support conditions, level of corrosion and damage in members and connections etc. Hence actual measurements of bridge response should be considered in making decisions on structural integrity, especially in cases of high value bridges (large spans and major crossings). This paper describes in detail the experimental investigations carried out on an open web type steel railway bridge. Strain gages and displacement transducers were installed at critical locations and responses were measured during passage of locomotives. Stresses were evaluated and extrapolated to maximum design loading. The responses measured from the bridge were within the permissible limits. The methodology adopted shall be used for assessing the structural integrity of the bridge for the design loads.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.505-524
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• 2010

Wireless structural monitoring systems consist of networks of wireless sensors installed to record the loading environment and corresponding response of large-scale civil structures. Wireless monitoring systems are desirable because they eliminate the need for costly and labor intensive installation of coaxial wiring in a structure. However, another advantageous characteristic of wireless sensors is their installation modularity. For example, wireless sensors can be easily and rapidly removed and reinstalled in new locations on a structure if the need arises. In this study, the reconfiguration of a rapid-to-deploy wireless structural monitoring system is proposed for monitoring short- and medium-span highway bridges. Narada wireless sensor nodes using power amplified radios are adopted to achieve long communication ranges. A network of twenty Narada wireless sensors is installed on the Yeondae Bridge (Korea) to measure the global response of the bridge to controlled truck loadings. To attain acceleration measurements in a large number of locations on the bridge, the wireless monitoring system is installed three times, with each installation concentrating sensors in one localized area of the bridge. Analysis of measurement data after installation of the three monitoring system configurations leads to reliable estimation of the bridge modal properties, including mode shapes.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.37-51
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• 2012

New generation of tall and complex buildings systems are now introduced that are reflective of the latest development in materials, design, sustainability, construction, and IT technologies. While the complexity in design is being overcome by the availability and advances in structural analysis tools and readily advanced software, the design of these buildings are still reliant on minimum code requirements that yet to be validated in full scale. The involvement of the author in the design and construction planning of Burj Khalifa since its inception until its completion prompted the author to conceptually develop an extensive survey and real-time structural health monitoring program to validate all the fundamental assumptions mad for the design and construction planning of the tower. The Burj Khalifa Project is the tallest structure ever built by man; the tower is 828 meters tall and comprises of 162 floors above grade and 3 basement levels. Early integration of aerodynamic shaping and wind engineering played a major role in the architectural massing and design of this multi-use tower, where mitigating and taming the dynamic wind effects was one of the most important design criteria established at the onset of the project design. Understanding the structural and foundation system behaviors of the tower are the key fundamental drivers for the development and execution of a state-of-the-art survey and structural health monitoring (SHM) programs. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to discuss the execution of the survey and real-time structural health monitoring programs to confirm the structural behavioral response of the tower during construction stage and during its service life; the monitoring programs included 1) monitoring the tower's foundation system, 2) monitoring the foundation settlement, 3) measuring the strains of the tower vertical elements, 4) measuring the wall and column vertical shortening due to elastic, shrinkage and creep effects, 5) measuring the lateral displacement of the tower under its own gravity loads (including asymmetrical effects) resulting from immediate elastic and long term creep effects, 6) measuring the building lateral movements and dynamic characteristic in real time during construction, 7) measuring the building displacements, accelerations, dynamic characteristics, and structural behavior in real time under building permanent conditions, 8) and monitoring the Pinnacle dynamic behavior and fatigue characteristics. This extensive SHM program has resulted in extensive insight into the structural response of the tower, allowed control the construction process, allowed for the evaluation of the structural response in effective and immediate manner and it allowed for immediate correlation between the measured and the predicted behavior. The survey and SHM programs developed for Burj Khalifa will with no doubt pioneer the use of new survey techniques and the execution of new SHM program concepts as part of the fundamental design of building structures. Moreover, this survey and SHM programs will be benchmarked as a model for the development of future generation of SHM programs for all critical and essential facilities, however, but with much improved devices and technologies, which are now being considered by the author for another tall and complex building development, that is presently under construction.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.635-638
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• 2007

In this paper, we described the fundamental concepts of proposed structural health monitoring system for Uldolmok Tidal Current Power Plant focusing on the use of smart sensors including fiber bragg grating sensors and macro fiber composite sensors. The structural health monitoring system can play an important role to maintain the structural safety for offshore structures like as bridges and high-rise buildings. In the case of tidal current power plant, the monitoring system is much more important since the structures are usually constructed at the site with severer environmental loadings such as high current speed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.241-262
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• 2012

Some applications require structural health monitoring in inaccessible components. This paper presents a technique useful for Structural Health Monitoring of double wall structures, such as double wall steam pipes and double wall pressure vessels separated from an ultrasonic transducer by three layers. Detection has been demonstrated at distances in excess of one meter for a fixed transducer. The case presented here is for one of the layers, the middle layer, being a fluid. For certain transducer configurations the wave propagating in the fluid is a wave with low velocity and attenuation. The paper presents a model based on wave theory and finite element simulation; the experimental set-up and observations, and comparison between theory and experiment. The results provide a description of the technique, understanding of the phenomenon and its possible applications in Structural Health Monitoring.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.511-531
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• 2013

Recent advances in low-cost remote monitoring systems have made it possible and practical to perform structural health monitoring (SHM) on a large scale. However, it is difficult for a single remote monitoring system to cover a wide range of SHM applications due to the amount of specialization required. For the remote monitoring system to be flexible, sustainable, and robust, this article introduces a new cost-effective, advanced remote monitoring and inspection system named DuraMote that can serve as a next generation supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for civil infrastructure systems. To evaluate the performance of DuraMote, we conduct experiments at two representative counterpart sites: a bridge and water pipelines. The objectives of this article are to improve upon the existing SCADA by integrating the remote monitoring system (i.e., DuraMote), to describe a prototype SCADA for civil engineering structures, and to validate its effectiveness with long-term field deployment results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.458-464
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• 2008

The structural health monitoring has been gaining more importance in civil engineering areas such as earthquake and wind engineering. The use of health monitoring system can also provide tools for the validation of structural analytical model. However, only few structures such as historical buildings and some important long bridges have been instrumented with structural monitoring system due to high cost of installation, long and complicated installation of system wires. In this paper, the structural monitoring system based on cheap and wireless monitoring system is investigated. The use of advanced technology of micro-electro-mechanical system(MEMS) and wireless communication can reduce system cost and simplify the installation. Further the application of wireless MEMS system can provide enhanced system functionality and due to low noise densities. Identification results are compared to ones using data measured from traditional accelerometers and results indicate that the system identification using wireless MEMS system estimates system parameters accurately.

• Advanced Composite Materials
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.135-149
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• 2007

In the automobile industry, structural health monitoring of fiber reinforced polymer composite parts is a widespread need for maintenance before breakdown of the functional elements or a complete vehicle. High performance sensors are generally used in many of the structural health monitoring operations. Within this study, a carbon fiber sewing thread has been used as a low cost laminate failure sensing element. The experimentation plan was set up according to the electrical conductance and flexibility of carbon fiber threads, advantages of preforming operations, and sewing mechanisms. The influence of the single thread damages by changing the electrical resistance and monitoring the impact location by using carbon thread sensors has been performed. Innovative utilization of relatively cost-effective carbon threads for monitoring the delamination of metallic inserts from the basic composite laminate structure is a highlighting feature of this study.