Sensor Nodes for Continuous Monitoring of Structures Through Accelerometric Measurements

Nowadays, the need of continuous monitoring systems on different type of structures is becoming crucial in many sectors. Data collected through this type of measurement devices can be used for real time alarm generation in case of possible dangerous situations or gathered in order to figure out the remaining fatigue life of the structure and to schedule accordingly the predictive maintenance. A custom sensor has been designed to this purpose. The focus of the paper is the sensor node architecture: the device has been specifically designed in order to perform accelerometric measurements, to process data on board, to send synthetic data wirelessly. In the design stage particular attention has been paid to the energy consumption, in order to make the node energetically autonomous using harvesters or small power sources. Sensors have been realized and tested in two use cases, both in severe environmental conditions in order to assess the reliability of the whole system in real operative scenarios.