A web-based structural health monitoring sensor network

Abstract

This paper presents a web-based structural health monitoring (SHM) sensor network for sensor data visualisation, data processing and damage diagnosis. Most existing web-based monitoring systems employ a centralised web server. The severe limitation of communication bandwidth in wireless sensor networks, however, limits the application of the centralised web server approach, especially in SHM networks which have high sampling rate. To reduce the amount of sensor data to be transmitted, the presented web-based SHM sensor network provides web services at sensor node level for real-time sensor data visualisation, data processing and damage diagnosis. Web services are available both on sensor nodes and a data repository machine with a web server. The ability of directly accessing data on sensor nodes via internet allows users to monitor the performance of a structure in a timely manner. The presented web-based system has been tested using a scaled steel bridge structure. The test results show the feasibility of using this web-based system for the real-time sensor data visualisation and damage diagnosis.