A Practical Monitoring System for the Structural Safety of Mega-Trusses Using Wireless Vibrating Wire Strain Gauges

Sensor technologies have been actively employed in structural health monitoring (SHM) to evaluate structural safety. To provide stable and real-time monitoring, a practical wireless sensor network system (WSNS) based on vibrating wire strain gauges (VWSGs) is proposed and applied to a building under construction. In this WSNS, the data measured from each VWSG are transmitted to the sensor node via a signal line and then transmitted to the master node through a short-range wireless communication module (operating on the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band). The master node also employs a long-range wireless communication module (Code Division Multiple Access—CDMA) to transmit the received data from the sensor node to a server located in a remote area, which enables a manager to examine the measured data in real time without any time or location restrictions. In this study, a total of 48 VWSGs, 14 sensor nodes, and seven master nodes were implemented to measure long-term strain variations of mega-trusses in an irregular large-scale building under construction. Based on strain data collected over a 16-month period, a quantitative evaluation of the construction process was performed to determine the aspects that exhibit the greatest influence on member behavior and to conduct a comparison with numerical simulation results. The effect of temperature stress on the structural elements was also analyzed. From these observations, the feasibility of a long-term WSNS based on VWSGs to evaluate the structural safety of an irregular building under construction was confirmed.