An experimental study for decentralized damage detection of beam structures using wireless sensor networks

This paper addresses the issue of reliability and performance in wireless sensor networks (WSN) based structural health monitoring (SHM), particularly with decentralized damage identification techniques. Two decentralized damage identification algorithms, namely, the autoregressive (AR) model based damage index and the Wiener filter method are developed for structural damage detection. The ambient and impact testing have been carried out on the steel beam structure in the laboratory. Seven wireless sensors are installed evenly along the steel beam and seven wired sensor are also installed on the beam to monitor the dynamic responses as comparison. The results showed that wireless measurements performed very much similar to wired measurements in detecting and localizing damages in the steel beam. Therefore, apart from the usual advantages of cost effectiveness, manageability, modularity etc., wireless sensors can be considered a possible substitute for wired sensors in SHM systems.