Health monitoring of civil engineering infrastructures with optical fiber sensors

Abstract

Structural health monitoring is a fundamental tool to guaranty the civil infrastructure lifetime. In this paper, the monitoring of an adobe structure with optical fiber sensors is reported. Static and dynamic measurements were made during a destructive test on a full-scale wall, with an optical fiber accelerometer and a network of thirteen multiplexed displacement sensors. The measured values shown a decrease of 47.8 % in the first natural frequency value, between the initial situation (structure undamaged) and after the cyclic test (structure damaged). The results show very good agreement (maximum relative error in terms of structural frequency of 2.08 %) between the results obtained using electronic sensing technology and the optical sensing technology.