An Environmental Monitoring Method of Ancient Buildings Based on the Micro Electro Mechanical System Accelerometers

Abstract

In order to evaluate and compare the performance of MEMS accelerometers for the environmental monitoring of ancient buildings, four MEMS accelerometers of different types and a G1B-type force-balanced accelerometer are selected and installed on the same location in an ancient building for field testing. The ambient environmental monitoring of the building recorded by the MEMS accelerometers is compared with the G1B accelerometer in terms of time history, Fourier spectrum, and modal frequency identification. In addition, the earthquake-induced structural responses of the ancient building recorded by MEMS-I type accelerometer is compared with those recorded by the G1B accelerometer in both time and frequency domain. The test results show that the noise levels of the four MEMS accelerometers are all higher than that of the G1B accelerometer. Among them, the MEMS-I type accelerometer has a relatively lower level of sensor noise and achieves a good match with the G1B accelerometer in terms of modal frequency identification and earthquake-induced structural environmental measurement, which proves that the MEMS-I type accelerometer can record the strong structural vibration with acceptable accuracy and is feasible for daily environmental monitoring of the ancient buildings.