Practical Implementation of Electrical Tomography in a Distributed System to Examine the Condition of Objects

Abstract

This paper presents a nondestructive method to examine the condition of objects, such as brick wall, flood embankments, landfills, air brick, and similar constructions. We used a setup made of specially built a distributed system with measuring devices to determine the moisture level of flood embankments and to test brick walls. It is an innovative solution for the evaluation buildings and tanks, both in terms of the measuring method the reconstruction algorithm. The application of modern tomographic techniques in conjunction with topological algorithms allows us to perform a noninvasive and very accurate spatial assessment of the dampness level. Electrical tomography under various names includes many techniques for tomographic imaging of the electrical parameters of an object placed in an examination area. We propose a new hybrid solution utilizing imaging techniques together with surface electrodes. Although many methods of evaluating dampness and damage exist, there is no universal solution that is optimal under a wide range of measurement conditions. Our proposed solution achieves this using the topology method for optimization. The smart tomographic measurement systems used in our solution were developed by authors belonging to the Netrix Research and Development Laboratory. These systems included measuring devices, distributed systems, algorithms, and applications for image reconstruction. Several types of reconstruction algorithms and models are explored in this paper. The solution of this optimization problem is obtained by combining the finite element method and topological algorithms. Reconstruction of 2-D examples using numerical and experimental data is shown. The proposed tomographic system consists of a central processing unit, a set of sensors (devices) and a software solution that leverages cloud computing and a big data cluster for processing, visualizing, and analyzing data (a cyber-physical system).