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Interdisciplinary team studies bridge structures  Measuring bridge response from the bridge using smart sensors: (l) Kirill Mechitov (UIUC, CS) and Prof. Yasunori Miyamori (r) are checking radio communication between two smart sensors. Data from the sensor on the bridge are transferred into the base station sensor, which Dr. Miyamori is holding. A team of student researchers from the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Computer Science (CS) is conducting its first full-scale testing of a system for continuous, wireless, real-time monitoring of structures. Working under professors Bill Spencer and Gul Agha, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the group is deploying the system outside the laboratory for the first time in a study of a local pedestrian bridge. Concerns about aging infrastructure and disasters like the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse have focused widespread attention on the importance of structural health monitoring. Monitoring systems do not replace human inspection, but rather make it possible for inspectors to work more efficiently, targeting structures where measurements indicate possible damage. Wired systems that use multiple sensors to detect strain and vibration typically require costly, time-consuming installation due to the necessity of cabling, or stringing the wires. Such systems can only take measurements and return data to a central location, where it must be analyzed to determine if the numbers indicate likely damage in the structure. The new system under development at Illinois uses cutting-edge wireless technology and smart sensors, capable of both gathering data and processing it, so only the most relevant information is transmitted. Each sensor node, measuring only a few inches, includes a device for detecting vibrations in the structure, a microprocessor that can compare current measurements reflecting the structural response with baseline numbers, and a radio transmitter. "Now we can put hundreds, thousands, of these all over a structure, we can process data out in the sensor network, and then we can just send back pertinent information to a central location," explained Jennifer Rice, a CEE PhD student involved in the project. "So rather than use a traditional system with wired sensors with no processing capability—dumb sensors as opposed to smart sensors—we can advance structural health monitoring and put networks on structures that actually tell us useful things instead of just data."  US-Japan bridge testing, (l to r) Kirill Mechitov (UIUC, CS), Prof. Yasunori Miyamori (Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan), Jennifer Rice (UIUC, CEE), Shin Ae Jang (UIUC, CEE), Prof. Tomonori Nagayama (University of Tokyo, Japan), Dr. Dionysius Siringoringo (University of Tokyo, Japan), Dinh Minh Hung (University of Tokyo, Japan). "The people in computer science help us implement these things from a software standpoint," said Rice, whose area of expertise is the customized sensor hardware. "It's outside the civil engineering realm. We can do some limited programming, but this would not be possible without the collaboration."
For this first field testing of the system, the students have installed more than 50 sensor nodes on the local pedestrian bridge, an historic steel-truss bridge located in Mahomet, Illinois. No baseline data is available on the bridge's structural response when it was first built, but, according to Rice, the bridge's two identical spans enable the comparing of measurements. When the project is complete, students will have monitored the bridge for about two years. Sometime this year, the team plans to deploy the monitoring system on a much larger scale at the brand-new Jindo Bridge in Korea. Civil engineers from Japan also are collaborating on the bridge monitoring projects, including CEE alumnus Tomonori Nagayama (PhD 2007, CEE), who worked on the local project as a PhD student at Illinois and is now an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. In September, collaborators gathered at Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory for the U.S.-Japan Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, which featured presenters from the University of Illinois, the University of Tokyo, the Kitami Institute of Technology, and Kajima Corporation. Contacts: Bill Spencer, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 217/333-8630.
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