What is Structural Health Monitoring?
Structural Health Monitoring (or SHM) involves the use of sensors and microprocessors to determine the health of a structure. Structures include bridges, buildings, etc. SHM uses "smart" sensors, also called "motes", to partially process the raw data collected locally on a structure before sending the results to a base station for further processing.
The Basic Idea
Traditionally, structures recieve scheduled maitenance as they age. This, however, can let problems go unnoticed, since maitenence checks are usually infrequent, time-consuming, not always thorough, and often expensive. The basic idea behind structural health monitoring is that, with the correct sensing technology, the health of a structure can be tracked constantly, so minor problems can be identified and fixed (relatively) cheaply before the become big, expensive, and potentilly dangerous.
What is "Healthy"?
A structure is considered "healthy" when it is functioning as it was originally designed to. It is not healthy when it has been compromised by some sort of structural deformity, such as cracks or fatigue, when causes it to weaken, threatening low performance and/or structural failure.
