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SHM of Concrete Bridge Structures using Wireless Sensor Networks

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 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany
SHM of Concrete Bridge Structures using Wireless Sensor Networks
Syed Humair Ali#1*, Muhammad Zaid #2 , Murad Abdullah#3, Dr. Tariq Mairaj Rasool Khan #4
Department of Electrical & Power Engineering (PNEC-Karachi Campus), National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST)
H-12 Islamabad, Pakistan.
{humair.ali, zaid, murad.abdullah.ee, khan.tariq}@ pnec.nust.edu.pk
Abstract— This paper presents a localized information
processing approach for long-term automated online structural
health monitoring (SHM) using wireless sensor network (WSN).
Feature-based Vibration examination is a powerful diagnostic
tool for evaluating the structural performance. This paper
presents vibration analysis of acceleration data collected by
accelerometers at multiple locations of an old pre-stressed heavily
loaded bridge that included healthy as well as un-healthy parts
and is the main carrier of Karachi port traffic using signal
processing techniques. All sensors have been linked to form a
WSN network. The position for mounting sensors has
deliberately been chosen in between the piers of bridge so the
maximum impact of vibration can be felt on girders. This
deployment demonstrates the potential of WSN networks for
structure health monitoring of large scale civil infrastructures.
Keywords— Structural health monitoring, wireless sensor
network, Wiener filter, FFT, power spectra, noise reduction, SNR,
modal frequencies
I. INTRODUCTION
Vibration is one of the property of mechanical objects.
Vibration examination plays an important part in mechanical
structures design and maintenance [1]. Bridge Structural Health
Monitoring is a broad research domain and different ways like
predictable visual assessment, wired sensors and Wireless
Sensor Network (WSN) are being applied. Accelerometers are
frequently used in bridge SHM [2].
SHM is primarily done by two basic methods [4]
A. The interval based assessment procedure.
B. The condition based assessment procedure.
Visual Inspection can be done by using the 1st technique.
This method consists of acoustic sounding, chain drag,
ultrasonic testing, and reflected radar wave methods using Non
Destructive Testing (NDT). The second technique is done by
vibration analysis, operational deflection shapes and strain
measurement. [8]
A major SHM focus in recent years has been vibration
based monitoring because vibration measurements can be used
to detect damage invisible [15] or hidden within the internal
areas of the structure before it can be observed by visual
inspection [5]. Mostly the SHM research work has been
conducted on hanging bridges [2]. Many techniques has been
used and all has certain limits [5]
WSN has been a hot-topic of research with the advances in
ultra-low powered nodes and efficient networking
protocols/algorithms [7]. WSN Scope is not just limited to
SHM only but considers a wide variety of domains where low
power, low cost [6] and event driven monitoring is required.
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Our case study bridge is located in a 3rd world country
where the infrastructure is already old and construction
practices are not very great and bridge collapsing/disasters are
frequent, we have implemented a real time monitoring system
for this pre-stressed old bridge. This bridge has healthy low
vibration parts as well as unhealthy parts that have higher
vibrations. The un-healthy part has been chosen wisely where
the rubber padding has been deformed and high vibration
noises can be heard. The vibration intensity is also affected by
the speed of the vehicle moving through bridge and the load it
carries. As from time to time there are certain aging factors that
decay with respect to time and require preventive maintenance
to parts that deteriorate to certain threshold including rubber
padding that causes extreme vibrations and made girders to get
strike with each other and get damaged by their self.
The aim of this paper is to intend a prototype for low
power driven 24/7 continuous automated online health
monitoring system for bridges /old large civil structures, as
civil infrastructures provides the means for society to function.
Structural health monitoring is key for heavy loaded bridges,
large scale buildings, old heritage structures to maintain a long
and reliable life. It is also essential in avoiding disasters.
However, the effectiveness of maintenance and inspection
program is limited to time to time inspection and to reveal
problematic performance hence the move to real time round the
clock online automated monitoring of system is quite worthy.
Therefore, an ultra-low power structural health monitoring
system using wireless sensors can be used to monitor buildings
round the clock with little or no requirement of maintenance to
preserve long and reliable span of their useful life which in turn
estimates the health and hence preventing sudden collapse /
disaster. In this paper, we have design a prototype for SHM
that has the following capabilities
x Real-time continuous monitoring
x Highly cost effective
x Energy efficient
x Automated / Less human intervention required
x Scalable with different civil structures
Fig.1. Disaster due to unmonitored poor health bridge. An incident happened
in Karachi (Pakistan) at sher-shah bridge in recent years
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 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany
This paper targets two main domains
A. Structural Health Monitoring
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is rising as a
significant constituent for sustainable management of public
works infrastructure systems such as bridges, tunnels,
buildings, and dams. The main focus of our research work is
bridge structural health monitoring, specifically the
analysis of bridge state examination using static and dynamic
non-destructive experiments. For SHM we have transformed
the time series data into frequency domain through Fast Fourier
Transform. The benefit of frequency domain methods as
compared to time domain methods is that minimal noise modes
are obtained. Wiener filter has been applied to FFT results for
extraction of modal frequencies.
B. Wireless Sensor Networks
Distributed sensor nodes comprises to form a Wireless
sensor network (WSN) to observe some physical or
environmental conditions, for instance temperature, humidity
and sound etc. WSN nodes are commonly referred as motes.
They work by transiting their data packets all the way through
the mesh network to a destined core location. The modern
networks are capable of transmitting bi-directional thus,
enabling control of sensor activity. The development of WSN
was motivated by military purpose applications like battlefield
surveillance; nowadays WSN networks are used in large
number of industrial and consumer applications, such as
industrial process monitoring & control, machine health
monitoring, and so on. [13]
The results of this vibration based SHM technique inform
potential of the proposed technique and are shown/discussed in
result section.
II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Structural health monitoring is a complex task that cannot
be done 24/7 physically by engineers but it is an essential
factor that need to be monitored round the clock especially for
high rise buildings, heavy traffic bridges and old heritage
structures. Thus taking this as a problem statement, the answer
to the problem is an ultra-low power structural health
monitoring system comprising of wireless system based
sensors [6] to be used for monitoring buildings with real time
alarming situation alert for values crossing certain threshold.
This system needs to be deployed once with sensors at critical
points of location to be monitored with capability of
transmitting data wirelessly to a solar powered base station and
finally via GSM /GPRS on a public network/internet for
database management / further analytical processing.
Wireless sensor network with cell powered micro sensors
are flourishing swiftly and changing the means of gathering
information, its processing and communication. These
networks are capable to endeavor hundreds of low-cost
sensors, data processing capable nodes and communication
components. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are taken as
platforms for numerous novel type of applications, like habitat
or health monitoring, building automation, and logistics. The
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scope of this paper will be restricted to structural health
monitoring via accelerometers sensors.
In order to have a low power profile solution we have to
select a wireless standard that is very less in energy
consumption thus leads us to choose IEEE standard 802.15.4
wireless sensor network and 802.15.4 compatible less energy
driven hardware devices i.e. TelosB/IRIS Motes that uses
TinyOS as their operating system for low energy consumption
as motes operate on two AA cell batteries. For base station we
choose solar powered setup as it is power hungry due to 4G
module and single chip computer. The single hop topology has
been used to collect all of the sensors data at base station
Placement of sensors has been chosen wisely as to cover both
healthy and un-healthy parts of bridge and to maintain the
required topology without data losses. The chosen sampling
rate is 24 samples/sec per sensor and 2 sensors have been
interfaced with a single mote and motes uses single hop
communication for sending data to base station.
The acceleration responses formed by ambient and traffic
situations are measured by sensors(accelerometers) which
installed at specific locations. Modal examination algo's are
then implemented on the recorded data for extraction of modal
properties of the structure. If there is a slight variation in its
structural properties, the modal properties (natural frequency,
mode shapes etc.) will immensely depict the change. This
variation is distinguished by modal analysis of the acceleration
data recorded at various time intervals. [3]
Our proposed and tested approach for vibration based SHM
do consist of the following basic blocks as depicted in Fig .2
Fig.2. Block Diagram of SHM
This is an early test bed model that has already been
developed and tested at Jinnah bridge and data has successfully
transmitted to Microsoft azure cloud database. we have
deployed multiple sensors and successfully gathered few
months data.
Taking the erroneous aspect in mind we have deployed 2
ADXL-345 accelerometer sensors each with 3 motes being
capable of communicating in a single/multi hop topology and
finally reporting to base station. we have deployed our sensors
at different parts of bridges for taking up vibration data for
analyzing the deteriorating factor in different parts of bridge
with the factor of time.
2 © VDE VERLAG GMBH  Berlin  Offenbach
 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany
we have expanded IRIS external connector for interfacing
it with multiple sensors using I2C,the same is shown in Fig. 3
Fig.3. IRIS mote with pin expansion
The base station comprises of a mote connected with a
Raspberry Pi Board through USB interface along with 3G/4G
USB pluggable internet dongle. This dongle is used to upload
all the readings on Microsoft Azure which is a digital online
cloud database
Sensor Housing &Coupling
In order to have proper coupling of accelerometer with
bridge for immense sensing of vibrations and for ease of
deployment of the same as well as its protection from damages
to avoid wear and tear, sensor housing has been designed using
solid works. Adhesive has been used to stick the sensor along
with its casing in between bridge piers. The design of the
casing can be seen in the Fig. 4.
Fig.4. Casing design, ADXL holder.
This casing afterward was printed by a 3D printer as shown
in Fig. 5
Fig.5. 3D print of casing made with lid open.
SIGNAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES
FFT
Fourier analysis converts a signal from time domain to
frequency domain and vice versa. In frequency domain the
components of the frequencies represent the single sinusoidal
oscillations at the distinct frequencies each with their own
amplitude and phase. The fast Fourier transform refers to
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algorithms that compute the discrete Fourier transform (DFT)
in a numerically efficient manner.
2π
For notational convenience, we define WN = e−j N and
write the DFT equation as
kn
X[k] = ∑N−1
n=0 x[n]WN , 0 ≤ k ≤ N − 1.
This offers the expansion of the signal which highlights the
frequency contents present in the signal.
WIENER FILTER
Wiener Filter has also been implemented in order to de-
noise the signal. The problem in the discrete time (DT) term
may be stated in terms of Fig.6
x[n] LTI ℎ[ ] y[n] = estimate
y[n] = target process
Fig. 6 DT LTI for linear MMSE (Minimum Mean Error Estimation)
Here x[n] is WSS (Wide Sense Stationary). The response
of above mentioned Linear Time Invariant system will be
computed using a metric which is minimum-mean-square-error
(MMSE).Defining the error e[n] as
e[n] ≜ {y[n] − y[n]}
we wish to carry out the following minimization
minh[.] e = E {e2 [n]}.
The resulting h[n] is called Wiener filter for estimation of
y[n] from x[n].
III. RESULTS
A. Case Study
Jinnah Bridge located at harbor area of Karachi
Pakistan has been choosen as the case study for deployment of
our prototype. This bridge is is one of the largest bridge of the
city 'Karachi', was constructed in late 1990's.
Due to its locality at Karachi Sea Port heavy traffic is
usual on this bridge and with the impact of deep sea terminal
recently inaugurated more and more traffic is being witnessed
on this bridge.
Fig. 7. Aerial View of Jinnah Bridge
Our main task was to implement our idea into a real time
scenario model thus lead us to develop an early test bed which
was deployed on Jinnah bridge for testing the proto type.
Many verification and optimization tests were necessary
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 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany

before taking the laboratory project to harsh environment site, one at the left and one at the right. The technical diagram will
we started through the literature survey of many of the elaborate the same in Fig. 10
research paper that do contain the monitoring of hanging
bridge but none was purely specified to concrete bridge.
Following network topology has been chosen for
deployment of proposed SHM on bridge structure

Fig. 10. Technical Diagram of sensor placement

The traffic load has also been monitored via IP HD camera

for having a clear picture of traffic load and its impact on
Fig. 8. Single Hop Network Topology Diagram bridge structure.
The network topology for SHM has been carefully verified
as to avoid any data losses due to long range/interference in
wireless signals. The Tx / Rx distance with and without
external antenna have carefully been selected as our motes do
comprises of different models i.e. Iris end hop motes that
have external antenna where as the base station mote that is
Xm1000 only have built in smart antenna. Single Hop
communication have been implemented in node to node and
node to base station scenario.
The sensor nodes have been installed beneath the bridge as
Fig. 11. Traffic overview via IP HD cam
shown in Fig 9, in-between two piers so maximum intensity of
vibration with respect to girders can be recorded. The
The WSN motes are placed in such a sequence that firstly
vibration impact is also altered by the condition of rubber
the load gets on mote 3 then 2 then lastly at 1. Time Domain
padding between beams of the bridges as well as the load it
analysis of vibration signal of three motes showing time
carries and by speed of the moving vehicle. Signal processing
lagging as vehicles crosses them is as follows
techniques have been applied to the gathered data. The data
has been categorized in to two categories with respect to
selective position of sensors at bridge parts, the bad being the
unhealthy part due to extreme rubber padding damages that
might have caused internal damages to that part of bridge
structure as well while the other part being the healthy one as
no such noisy vibrations are being heard beneath.

Fig. 12 Time Domain Analysis of motes sensor vibration as load passes

over bridge through mote1, 2 and 3 respectively

Fig. 9. Placement of mote beneath bridge structure
B. Signal Analysis
FFT has been done with and without Wiener filter for
extraction of modal frequencies of recorded signals. The
Motes were placed alongside the bridge between piers to get
the maximum impact of girder vibration and has been placed
in series to each other. Each mote is equipped with 2 sensors
For finding the modal frequency FFT with and without wiener
filter has been performed on the gathered data of different
parts of bridge that include healthy as well as un-healthy parts
of bridge as shown below. First two figures Fig. 13 and Fig.14
shows the FFT results on healthy parts depicting modal
frequency of 1.003Hz and 1.065Hz whereas Fig.15 shows the
FFT results on unhealthy part of bridge depicting multiple
modal frequencies.

ISBN 978-3-8007-4694-1 4 © VDE VERLAG GMBH  Berlin  Offenbach

 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany

Fig. 13. Time Domain plot of mote1 sensor 1 along with FFT with/without wiener filter of healthy part depicting modal frequency of 1.003Hz

Fig.14. Time Domain plot of mote3 sensor 1 along with FFT with/without wener filter of healthy part depicting modal frequency of 1.065 Hz

whereas the same signal analysis technique FFT with and without Wiener filter has been replicated for un-healthy part of bridge
for extraction of modal frequency

Fig.15. Time Domain plot of mote3 sensor 1 along with FFT with/without wiener filter of un-healthy part depicting multiple modal frequencies.

ISBN 978-3-8007-4694-1 5 © VDE VERLAG GMBH  Berlin  Offenbach

 Smart SysTech 2018 Â June 12 – 13, 2018 in Dresden, Germany
C. Power Consumption Results
WSN Motes operates in different states like listening, idle
,transmitting, learning ,sleep period etc. For power efficient
real time monitoring of SHM we have calculated the power
consumption in each state.
TABLE I
S.No WSN Mote State Current(Amp)
Utilization
1 Listening state 23 mA
2 Transmitting state 19 mA
3 Idle State 20 μA
4 Sleep State 1 μA
Table I Power consumption table of mote in different states
Thus,
AA batteries are usually 2500 mAh or 2.5 Ah
1.5 V x 2.5 Ah = 3.75 Wh
3.75 x 3600 = 13500 J
So, the capacity for two such cells would be 2 x 13500 =
27000 J.
So, according to WSN Motes power consumption table:
If a mote is active for 10 minutes per day (0.7 % duty
cycle), the maximum energy utilized:
Active mode: 10 x 60 x 3 x 23 x 10^-3 = 41.4 J
Sleep Mode: 1430 x 60 x 3 x 1 x 10^-6 = 0.257 J
Therefore, energy consumed per day would be 41.4 +
0.257 = 41.66 J
Mote life = 27000/(41.65 x 365) = 1.775 years = 1 year 9
months
IV. DISCUSSION
The results shows the distinction in natural properties of
healthy /unhealthy parts of bridge. The power table shows
minimal power rating of our proposed WSN system. Modal
frequency decreases with the damages, so has been depicted
in unhealthy part as the first modal frequency has been
decreased to 0.9564 if we compare it with the healthy parts
modal frequency i.e. 1.003 and 1.065 respectively
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, Experimental test bed has been deployed at
20 year old stressed heavily loaded harbor bridge of Karachi
port which includes placement of accelerometers sensor with
WSN motes to form WSN network for vibration analysis of
different parts of bridge that include healthy as well as un-
healthy parts of bridge. The use of wireless communications in
lieu of wiring within a structural monitoring system was
initially proposed by Straser [11]. From which the research
work started and time to time new advancements have been
seen in the same domain.
Keeping in view the futuristic aspects ,research for
expected estimation of life and time frequency energy
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analysis will be done upon by Hilbert–Huang transform
(HHT) respectively. [3]
Depending upon futuristic need WSN motes will be made
intelligent enough by tweaking Mac layer 2 in sense of power
profiling, as most of the energy is taken by transceiver i.e.
data should be processed locally at motes, while sending
should only take place upon breaching a certain threshold as
several efforts have been made for developing more accurate
and energy saving algorithms for independent processing tasks
[14].
we can also exploit with the traffic intelligence system for
correlating the vibrations signals with traffic load. Cross co-
relation and auto co-relation matrices can be formed by the
gathered data that can predict more accurately the degradation
trend through the historical data.
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