Triaxial MEMS digital accelerometer and temperature sensor calibration techniques for structural health monitoring of reinforced concrete bridge laboratory test platform

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an advancing area in the field of structural engineering. The main objective of SHM is the verification of structural health and status in order to ensure proper performance and cost savings for maintenance using nondestructive tests. It is not limited to diagnosis but is extended to prognosis of what are the standards to implement in order to mitigate such destruction of civil infrastructures. However, there are still implementation issues such as improper calibration of sensors resulting to poor data integrity. This study is concerned in reducing the inconsistency of characteristics of the ADXL345 accelerometer and DS18B20 temperature sensors in laboratory and working conditions. Experimental design was employed in this study. Combined inclination sensing and subwoofer-setup calibration technique was employed to six accelerometers, which yielded 95.796% accuracy. Two-point calibration technique was employed to twelve temperature sensors, which yielded 90.960% accuracy. Less than 10 %, which is considered highly accurate measurement, were yielded from measuring structural vibration and temperature, and environment temperature data from a reinforced concrete bridge test platform. Thus, the proposed experimental study addressed successful enhancement of sensing characteristics of sensors.