Wireless Sensors for Monitoring Smart Civil Structures: An End Users Perspective

Professor Jerome Peter Lynch
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Michigan

ABSTRACT:
A smart civil structure is defined by sensing and/or actuation technologies embedded within the system to provide insight to the structure’s response and an opportunity to limit those responses. The past thirty years have been characterized by a revolution in the field of smart structure technologies with sensors and actuators both reducing in size, power demands and unit costs. This presentation is chiefly focused upon the development of advanced wireless monitoring systems for structural health monitoring applications. The benefits of installing a wireless monitoring system in a structure are multiple, including use of distributed computational networks capable of assessing the health of structural systems over their expected life spans. A low-cost and power-efficient wireless sensing network system utilizing MEMS-based accelerometers is investigated. Recently, wireless sensing units have been improved with capabilities to locally actuate structural systems.

BIO:
Dr. Jerome Lynch is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science by courtesy) at the University of Michigan. His current research interests are in the areas of wireless sensor networks, MEMS accelerometers, structural monitoring, active sensing, damage detection and decentralized structural control algorithms. He completed his graduate studies at Stanford University where he received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2002, MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1998, and MS in Electrical Engineering in 2003.