Structural health monitoring systems allow structures to be evaluated for safety without requiring the presence of an inspector, saving time, money, and possibly lives as structural degradation can be detected much sooner than manual inspection. In this project, the group will create a wireless network of sensors. Each sensor node will be embedded into highway concrete to collect long term data and store that data in a road-side base station. The data will be composed of humidity and temperature with options to add more sensors in the future.
The finished prototype to be delivered will only have a base station and six nodes, however the network control software will easily be up-scaled to accommodate a larger network of up to one-hundred nodes. The software will also be able to route around dead nodes so the network stays active if a device becomes damaged or its battery dies. Choosing inductive coupling makes the node highly sensitive to coil direction which can take time to place but gives the highest efficiency for charging through concrete.
Future applications of this project will help to maintain concrete integrity and decrease the need for manual inspections of civil structures. Implementation of this network will help to make wireless sensor networks, for monitoring structures, more feasible to implement in production. Further refinement to the concrete mixture can be improved upon data collection during curing process.
The finished prototype to be delivered will only have a base station and six nodes, however the network control software will easily be up-scaled to accommodate a larger network of up to one-hundred nodes. The software will also be able to route around dead nodes so the network stays active if a device becomes damaged or its battery dies. Choosing inductive coupling makes the node highly sensitive to coil direction which can take time to place but gives the highest efficiency for charging through concrete.
Future applications of this project will help to maintain concrete integrity and decrease the need for manual inspections of civil structures. Implementation of this network will help to make wireless sensor networks, for monitoring structures, more feasible to implement in production. Further refinement to the concrete mixture can be improved upon data collection during curing process.
EE 491 Semester
EE 492 Semester