Self-charging and self-monitoring smart civil infrastructure systems: current practice and future trends

Abstract

Next generation of smart infrastructure is heavily dependent on distributed sensing technology to monitor the state of urban infrastructure. The smart sensor networks should react in time, establish automated control, and collect information for intelligent decision making. In this paper, we highlight our interdisciplinary research to address three main technical challenges related to smart infrastructure: (1) development of smart wireless sensors for civil infrastructure monitoring, (2) finding an innovative, cost-effective and sustainable energy resource for empowering heterogeneous, wireless sensor networks, and (3) designing advanced data analysis frameworks for the interpretation of the information provided by these emerging monitoring systems. More specifically, we focus on development of a self-powered piezo-floating-gate (PFG) sensor that uses only self-generated electrical energy harvested by piezoelectric transducers directly from a structure under vibration. The performance of this sensing technology is discussed for different civil infrastructure systems with complex behavior. Subsequently, the proposed data interpretation systems integrating deterministic, machine learning and statistical methods are reviewed. We outline our thoughtful vision for the proposed framework to serve as an integral part of future smart civil infrastructure, which will be capable of self-charging and the self-diagnosis of damage well in advance of the occurrence of failure.