Structural Health Monitoring of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings deteriorate because of cracking, corrosion, fatigue, construction defects, environmental exposure, and extreme events. Periodic visual inspection can miss early-stage or inaccessible damage, while conventional wired structural health monitoring (SHM) systems can be expensive to install in multi-storey buildings. This methodology paper develops a wireless sensor network (WSN) framework for continuous condition assessment of RC buildings. The proposed system combines low-frequency accelerometers for global vibration response, piezoelectric lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) or smart-aggregate sensing for local crack-sensitive measurements, and temperature/humidity sensors for environmental compensation. Sensor nodes perform time synchronization, filtering, local feature extraction, and IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee-based multihop communication to a building gateway. Damage is evaluated by changes in modal frequency, inter-storey response, and PZT electromechanical/active-sensing signatures using a root-mean-square-deviation (RMSD) index relative to a healthy baseline. A staged validation protocol is proposed using healthy, minor, moderate, and severe damage conditions. Illustrative methodology-validation results show monotonic increases in the damage index together with progressive reductions in the first natural frequency while maintaining high packet-delivery reliability. The framework is designed to reduce cabling, support dense sensing, localize suspicious zones, and trigger tiered inspection alerts. It provides a practical research methodology for WSN-enabled SHM of RC buildings using technologies and evidence available up to 2019.