Abstract
For aged, in‐service civil structures, continuous structural health monitoring is vital to avoid catastrophic failure. This includes monitoring local damage growth at points crucial to the structure’s stability. While traditional ultrasonic devices are well‐established for scheduled local human inspections, they are ineligible for continuous monitoring. The objective of this research is to develop a stand‐alone, self‐contained, compact ultrasonic device for continuous structural health monitoring of civil structures. The battery powered device integrates small ultrasonic transducers with a compact high speed data acquisition and processing unit and a wireless communication device. Rayleigh surface waves, generated by the device, will be used to detect and assess surface cracks. This study, documenting the ongoing development, presents a concept for the functional layout of the ultrasonic device. It also examines a method for the assessment of surface breaking damage using Rayleigh waves in a simulated environment. The examination is under the limitations on power levels that can be supplied by batteries. The ultrasonic device may later be combined with global approaches, like analysis of vibration signals, to increase the sensitivity of damage detection in order to avoid catastrophic failures.
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