Distributed Sensor Network for Structural Health Monitoring of Ships

There is a critical need for the ability to assess the structural health of the Navy’s ships through the use of strain monitoring. Typical strain monitoring systems consist of a set of analog strain sensors connected by individual cables to a centralized data acquisition system where their analog signals are conditioned and digitized for processing and analysis. This architecture has many disadvantages. It is cumbersome and obtrusive because of the amount of cabling required to connect the strain sensors to the data acquisition unit. Additionally, because of the long measurement lines these systems are very sensitive to electromagnetic interference (EMI) which can corrupt the analog signal leading to poor signal quality. This is especially true in the harsh EMI environment of a naval ship. A strain monitoring system that is simple, unobtrusive, and highly reliable would be invaluable to the Navy for assessing the health of their vessels. To provide this capability, McQ will develop the strain acquisition and monitoring system (SAMS). SAMS will reduce the amount of cabling required to instrument structures of interest, will be tolerant of EMI, and will be capable of running without batteries.