Distributed Monitoring System for Dynamic Identification Based on MEMS Sensors

The growing importance of state assessment in civil engineering has led to intensive research in the development of damage identification methods based on vibrations. Natural frequencies and modal shapes have garnered great interest because modal parameters are invariants of structures. Moreover, thanks to the global nature of modal parameters, their variations are not limited to the location of the damage. This is an important advantage that offers the opportunity to identify damage with sensors whose position does not have to coincide with the damaged area. In recent years, the use of MEMS sensors in SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) systems has attracted considerable attention. MEMS sensors are compact, low-power, and economical, making them ideal for large-scale and long-term monitoring of structures. For this purpose, the authors have proposed a distributed monitoring system composed of six high-performance MEMS sensors to identify the modes of a structure through Frequency Domain Decomposition.