Web platform for real-time monitoring of civil engineering structures using wireless sensor networks: deformation, acceleration, rotation, temperature, position and vibration (fiber Bragg grating)

Abstract

The technological advances of Civil Engineering allowed the construction of ever higher structures, long, slender and light. Parallel to these advances, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), an emerging field in engineering that has been bringing together several technological advances, such as: structural dynamics, materials, nondestructive testing, signal processing, communication systems, electronics, remote sensing and decision-making processes; is allowing, at every moment during the life of a structure, to provide a diagnosis of its state and a prognosis of the remaining life. This has been done through complete systems that bring together sensors and actuators, data transmission systems and data processing units, from which part (at least the sensors) are incorporated into the structure itself. One of the main reasons for the adoption and use of SHM is to increase safety, optimize and anticipate maintenance operations and extend the life of the structure. The recent technological advances of LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network), which is rapidly driving the growth of the IoT market, together with the Big Data tools in the cloud, Machine Learning computational techniques for automatic identification of structural parameters and physical quantities and obtaining high-volume knowledge of data generated by monitoring systems; will enable the massification of SHM platforms on a large scale, both local and global, in the IoT and Smart Cities paradigms. Currently the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) used in SHM, based on WiFi and ZigBee standards, have some bottlenecks, such as high power consumption and short-range data transmission; thus hindering its use in continuous monitoring in large areas. In this sense, research and development of new forms of WSN for the SHM in real time are necessary. Therefore, in the present project we propose to research and develop a web platform for SHM in real time using WSN (SHM-IoT) based on IoT technologies (LPWAN networks), more specifically LoRa networks. Basically the LoRa networks are very low power consumption and long range, and are focused on IoT solutions. In this phase of the project will be implemented the cloud web system, to storage, to visualization and data collection for two types of WSN, to be developed also in this phase of the project. The implementation of the web system will be based on the use of non-blocking technologies (Tornado/ Python), NoSQL database (Casandra) and JavaScript (Redux and React). The WSNs will be developed using LoRa technology. The first type of WSN will be based on acceleration, positioning, deformation, rotation and temperature sensors; the second type of network will be based on fiber optic vibration sensors, fiber Bragg grating (FBG), arranged in series. (AU)