Structure Health Monitoring

[silvarblade]

I was looking at some prospects of carrying out peizo resistive based monitoring of structures.I found that strain gauges are widely used but am doubtful about the fidelity of the readings. One could hook thme up in to a mesh i guess.There are a lot of other ways sound, lambwaves,optical etc but Peizo resistivity is too simple to ignore.Any comments.

 

[MikeMl]

Are you hoping to place enough sensors to actually detect a crack which propagates through the sensor, or are you measuring resonances in the underlying structure which change over time as cracks form and propagate?

 

[silvarblade]

I just had this idea of using a network of strain gauges to measure the 'strength' of the shed(nice little concrete structure).I think strain gauges will be fine.Will have to break it though and then put it up with the strain gauges.