Cyber-Physical Co-Design of Wireless Monitoring and Control for Civil Infrastructure

Supported by NSF under the CPS Program

---

Project Description

The objective of this research is to develop advanced distributed monitoring and control systems for civil infrastructure. The approach uses a cyber-physical co-design of wireless sensor-actuator networks and structural monitoring and control algorithms. The unified cyber-physical system architecture and abstractions employ reusable middleware services to develop hierarchical structural monitoring and control systems.

• The intellectual merit of this multi-disciplinary research includes:
  • A unified middleware architecture and abstractions for hierarchical sensing and control;
  • A reusable middleware service library for hierarchical structural monitoring and control;
  • Customizable time synchronization and synchronized sensing routines;
  • A holistic energy management scheme that maps structural monitoring and control onto a distributed wireless sensor-actuator architecture;
  • Dynamic sensor and actuator activation strategies to optimize for the requirements of monitoring, computing, and control;
  • Deployment and empirical validation of structural health monitoring and control systems on representative lab structures and in-service multi-span bridges.

While the system constitutes a case study, it will enable the development of general principles that would be applicable to a broad range of engineering cyber-physical systems.

This research will result in a reduction in the lifecycle costs and risks related to our civil infrastructure. The multi-disciplinary team will disseminate results throughout the international research community through open-source software and sensor board hardware. Education and outreach activities will be held in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Summer School in Smart Structures Technology jointly hosted by the US, Japan, China, and Korea.

• News Release: Engineering Professor Working to Help Bridges Survive Natural Disaster April 26, 2013.

Team

• Faculty
  • Chenyang Lu (Washington University)
  • Gul Agha, Bill Spencer (UIUC)
  • Shirley Dyke (Purdue University)

• Members
  • Greg Hackmann, Bo Li (Washington University)
  • Kirill Mechitov, Parya Moinzadeh, Lauren Linderman (UIUC)
  • Nestor Castaneda, Sriram Krishnan, Zhuoxiong Sun (Purdue University)

Ongoing Efforts

• Full Scale Truss Experiment
  • Wireless sensors running distributed, multi-level damage detection deployed on a full scale truss (17.04m L × 1.83m W × 1.98m H) at Purdue;
  • Damage detection results reflect actual damage locations, matching results from simulation.

• Jindo Bridge Monitoring
  • Field validation of wireless sensor-based monitoring of a cable-stayed bridge in Korea;
  • Long-term autonomous monitoring using 113 wireless smart sensors;
  • Establishment of an international testbed.

• Monitoring Services Toolsuite
  • Modular, service-oriented software library for assembling scalable monitoring applications;
  • Core services: universal sensing, time synchronization, reliable communication, multi-hop routing, power management, numerical library;
  • Used by 75 groups in 15 countries.

• Wireless Cyber-Physical Simulator (WCPS) for Structural Control
  • A cyber-physical simulation framework combining state-of-the-art structural models and wireless networking simulation;
  • Enables realistic design and testing of wireless structural control systems.

Publications

(Full list of publications)

Software

• Wireless Cyber-Physical Simulator (Washington University, Purdue University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  • Source Code
  • Installation Instructions
  • Usage Instructions

• Damage Localization Application using DLAC (Washington University)
  • Source Code
  • Installation Instructions
  • Usage Instructions

• Illinois SHM Services Toolsuite
  • Source Code
  • Documentation
  • Publications

Selected Talks

• News Release, Engineering Professor Working to Help Bridges Survive Natural Disaster, News, Washington University, April 26, 2013.
• Chenyang Lu, Real-Time Wireless Control Networks for Cyber-Physical Systems, Temple University, April 12, 2013.
• Bo Li, Realistic Case Studies of Wireless Structural Control, ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS'13), Philadelphia, PA, April 11, 2013.
• Chenyang Lu, Real-Time Wireless Control Networks: Challenges and Directions, The NITRD National Workshop on The New Clockwork for Time-Critical Systems, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, October 25-27, 2012.
• Chenyang Lu, Cyber-Physical Co-Design for Wireless Structural Health Monitoring, Distinguished Lecture, University of Louisville, Nov. 2011.
• Chenyang Lu, My (biased) Perspective on CPS, Panel on Networked Monitoring and Control/Cyber-Physical Systems, Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS'11), Porto, Portugal, July 2011.
• Greg Hackmann, "Cyber-Physical Codesign of Distributed Structural Health Monitoring With Wireless Sensor Networks", ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), April 2010. [PPTX] [PDF]
• Chenyang Lu, Distributed Structural Health Monitoring, CONet Joint Seminar, Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Stockholm, Sweden, July 2009.
• Greg Hackmann, "A Holistic Approach to Decentralized Structural Damage Localization Using Wireless Sensor Networks", IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), December 2008. [PPTX] [PDF]