Smart Joint system for in-situ monitoring of buildings

Acellent Technologies proposes to develop a smart joint structural health monitoring (SHM) sensor network that can autonomously assess in real time the structural stability of structures such as buildings. The sensor network will use a combination of large and small piezoelectric actuators and sensors to characterize damage in, and monitor the rigidity of components of the building primary structure, and fiber optic temperature sensors to monitor the structural temperature at various locations in the building. Acellent?s existing sensor network technology will be used as the basis for the proposed development. Innovations will include a redesigned sensor/actuator arrangement, the integration of fiber optic temperature sensors and software that will provide a map of the structural damage, rigidity and temperature information that will be used to provide a real time assessment of the building structural integrity. An additional development will be to use the piezoelectric sensors to recognize sound and/or voice transmitted through the structure to allow search and rescue personnel to pin-point the location of survivors and determine what they are trying to say through an easy conversion to text messaging. Phase I will focus on preliminary prototyping and technology demonstrations while Phase II will focus on complete system development.