Dr. Yang Wang's laboratory for Smart Structural Systems in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering recently earned the Student Best Paper award and the Most Practical Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Solution for Civil Infrastructures award at the 8th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM) in Stanford, CA.
The biennial workshop brings together researchers and practitioners in structural health monitoring from all around the world. Participants come from a variety of backgrounds, covering multiple disciplines such as aerospace, mechanical, and civil engineering.
The paper titled “Sensing Resolution and Measurement Range of a Passive Wireless Strain Sensor,” authored by PhD student Xiaohua Yi and others, was given the Student Best Paper Award. The paper describes outcome from a project sponsored by FHWA and in collaboration with Prof. Roberto T. Leon of CEE and Prof. Manos M. Tentzeris of ECE at Georgia Tech. A wireless and battery-free strain sensor, which can monitor stress concentration or cracks in a structure, is described in the paper. Operating on radio-frequency identification principle, the sensor receives all its operation power wirelessly from an interrogation reader. It is shown that the passive wireless sensor can detect small strain changes lower than 20 microstrains, and can perform well at a strain range higher than 10,000 microstrains.
In addition, a 5-min video titled “Mobile Sensor Network for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)” was given the Most Practical SHM Solution for Civil Infrastructures award during the SHM in Action session, where each academic or industrial contender provides a 5-min video or live demonstration to the workshop audience. Edited by PhD student Dapeng Zhu, the video showcases some latest research exploiting mobile sensor networks for structural health monitoring. Four mobile and completely tetherless robotic sensing nodes are shown autonomously navigating on the MARC pedestrian bridge on Georgia Tech campus, measuring bridge vibrations at high spatial resolution. In collaboration with Prof. Kok-Meng Lee of ME at Georgia Tech, the research project is sponsored by NSF. The award video is available below and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIPxnWQphMA.
Related Links: http://structure.stanford.edu/ http://people.ce.gatech.edu/~ywang/research.htm