A major focus of the structural engineering community is to develop systemsand structures that can monitor their own structural integrity in real time. Besidespreventing catastrophic failures, on-line damage detection would reduce costs byminimizing maintenance and inspection cycles. One of the most promising means ofdeveloping these self-monitoring structures is through the integration of smartmaterials into the structures themselves. Among smart materials, piezoelectricmaterials have drawn the attention of the research community because of theireffectiveness, unobtrusiveness and low cost. These materials show a couplingbetween their mechanical and electrical properties and they can be used both forsensing and producing vibrations in a structure. Smart materials open the door to theimplementation of non-destructive evaluation techniques, which assess the structureintegrity by measuring and analyzing the dynamic response of a system to anenvironmental or an ad hoc stimulus.In order to monitor structures with a high degree of accuracy, it is oftenrequired to instrument the structure with a high density of sensors. The installation ofa wired sensor network can be prohibitively expensive, since it may require changesto the structure itself (e.g. drilling holes in walls) and take several months inbuildings and infrastructure. This issues are addressed by wireless sensor networks,which constitute a cheap and effective way to instrument a structure and collect datawithout the need for expensive interventions
A major focus of the structural engineering community is to develop systemsand structures that can monitor their own structural integrity in real time. Besidespreventing catastrophic failures, on-line damage detection would reduce costs byminimizing maintenance and inspection cycles. One of the most promising means ofdeveloping these self-monitoring structures is through the integration of smartmaterials into the structures themselves. Among smart materials, piezoelectricmaterials have drawn the attention of the research community because of theireffectiveness, unobtrusiveness and low cost. These materials show a couplingbetween their mechanical and electrical properties and they can be used both forsensing and producing vibrations in a structure. Smart materials open the door to theimplementation of non-destructive evaluation techniques, which assess the structureintegrity by measuring and analyzing the dynamic response of a system to anenvironmental or an ad hoc stimulus.In order to monitor structures with a high degree of accuracy, it is oftenrequired to instrument the structure with a high density of sensors. The installation ofa wired sensor network can be prohibitively expensive, since it may require changesto the structure itself (e.g. drilling holes in walls) and take several months inbuildings and infrastructure. This issues are addressed by wireless sensor networks,which constitute a cheap and effective way to instrument a structure and collect datawithout the need for expensive interventions