Development of a Wireless MEMS Inertial System for Health Monitoring of Structures
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Development of a Wireless MEMS Inertial System for Health Monitoring of Structures Ronald Kok, Cosme Furlong, and Ryszard J. Pryputniewicz NEST – NanoEngineering, Science, and Technology CHSLT – Center for Holographic Studies and Laser micro-mechaTronics Mechanical Engineering Department Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609, U.S.A.
ABSTRACT Advancements in microelectromechanical technologies have lead to progressive design of small footprint, low dynamic mass and actuation power, and high-resolution MEMS inertial sensors. In this paper, development of instrumentation and methodologies for wireless health monitoring of structures using MEMS inertial sensors is presented. A dedicated experimental setup is developed to characterize specific MEMS inertial sensors and structures. Studies presented in this paper include development and characterization of a prototype wireless data acquisition system to transmit analog and digital signals. Results show that the frequency response of the prototype wireless data acquisition system is compatible with the frequency response of the MEMS inertial sensors utilized. The prototype wireless MEMS inertial system is applied to perform tilt and rotation measurements. It is shown that with the wireless MEMS system it is possible to achieve an angular resolution of 1.8 mrad.
INTRODUCTION Development of new materials and structures has increased the demand for accurate modeling of their mechanical behavior. Such modeling includes determination of dynamic properties of structures, such as their natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping factors. Dynamic properties can be determined with analytical and computational methodologies, but are limited to simple structures because they are insufficient to study complex structures. In order to study complex real-world structures, experimental modal analysis is necessary. Experimental modal analysis can be performed with MEMS inertial sensors. MEMS inertial sensors not only have high measuring accuracy in the frequency, time, and angular domains, but also have small packages and low dynamic mass. Such characteristics make them an optimal alternative to traditional sensors utilized in experimental modal analysis, which have larger masses and may modify the dynamic characteristics of the structures being investigated [1-3]. In order to demonstrate the applicability of MEMS inertial sensors to perform dynamic and angular measurements, experiments are performed to determine dynamic characteristics and angular resolution of MEMS inertial sensors. To transfer data from MEMS inertial sensors to signal analyzers, traditional wiring methods are utilized. Such methods provide reliable data transfer and are simple to integrate. However, in order to study complex structures, multiple inertial sensors, with wireless communications capabilities, attached to different locations on a structure, may be required. Therefore, a
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miniaturized wireless MEMS inertial sensor system is under development and its performance is characte
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