Study of Building Safety Monitoring by Using Cost-Effective MEMS Accelerometers for Rapid After-Earthquake Assessment with Missing Data

Abstract

Suffering from structural deterioration and natural disasters, the resilience of civil structures in the face of extreme loadings inevitably drops, which may lead to catastrophic structural failure and presents great threats to public safety. Earthquake-induced extreme loading is one of the major reasons behind the structural failure of buildings. However, many buildings in earthquake-prone areas of China lack safety monitoring, and prevalent structural health monitoring systems are generally very expensive and complicated for extensive applications. To facilitate cost-effective building-safety monitoring, this study investigates a method using cost-effective MEMS accelerometers for buildings’ rapid after-earthquake assessment. First, a parameter analysis of a cost-effective MEMS sensor is conducted to confirm its suitability for building-safety monitoring. Second, different from the existing investigations that tend to use a simplified building model or small-scaled frame structure excited by strong motions in laboratories, this study selects an in-service public building located in a typical earthquake-prone area after an analysis of earthquake risk in China. The building is instrumented with the selected cost-effective MEMS accelerometers, characterized by a low noise level and the capability to capture low-frequency small-amplitude dynamic responses. Furthermore, a rapid after-earthquake assessment scheme is proposed, which systematically includes fast missing data reconstruction, displacement response estimation based on an acceleration response integral, and safety assessment based on the maximum displacement and maximum inter-story drift ratio. Finally, the proposed method is successfully applied to a building-safety assessment by using earthquake-induced building responses suffering from missing data. This study is conducive to the extensive engineering application of MEMS-based cost-effective building monitoring and rapid after-earthquake assessment.

Lessons from Earthquake-affected Structures: The Necessity of Structural Health Monitoring and Instrumentation

“…SHM is a modern solution for post-earthquake evaluation of buildings, but its performance depends on complicated damage detection algorithms and the sensor system [61][62][63]. Prior to recent advances in producing cost-effective sensors, the high cost of sensor systems, installation, and maintenance discouraged building owners from building instrumentation and subsequent SHM options [61].…”

“…SHM is a modern solution for post-earthquake evaluation of buildings, but its performance depends on complicated damage detection algorithms and the sensor system [61][62][63]. Prior to recent advances in producing cost-effective sensors, the high cost of sensor systems, installation, and maintenance discouraged building owners from building instrumentation and subsequent SHM options [61]. However, more recently, the costs of sensors dropped from US$10000-US$25000 for a wired SHM sensor node towards US$500 for a wireless sensor node, where wireless technology also facilitated the installation and maintenance process [22].…”

Low-Cost Wireless Structural Health Monitoring of Bridges

“…For measuring the structural responses (such as deflections, strains, rotation, temperature, humidity, and accelerations) over time, sensors are widely used in SHM systems [ 9 , 10 ]. The recorded information of the sensors is then used for structural performance estimations [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. In fact, natural phenomena can be categorized as static or quasi-static and dynamic [ 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Improved Resolution and Cost Performance of Low-Cost MEMS Seismic Sensor through Parallel Acquisition

“…With the ability to transmit data ove network and apply a processing algorithm to real-time seismic data [37], automatically calculate ground motion parameters such as PGA and PGV [ low cost, low power consumption, small size, and processing ability, this instrument can be easily deployed in a seismic intensity rapid reporting o early warning network. It can also be used to monitor landslides [39, structural integrity of buildings and bridges [41][42][43][44]. Additionally, there m In this article, we propose the use of multiple low-cost and low-resolution digital MEMS accelerometers to improve the resolution of small signals by means of a correlation average.…”

“…With its low cost, low power consumption, small size, and processing ability, this small digital instrument can be easily deployed in a seismic intensity rapid reporting or earthquake early warning network. It can also be used to monitor landslides [ 39 , 40 ] and the structural integrity of buildings and bridges [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. Additionally, there may be many other uses for seismology, engineering and Earth sciences, such as array seismology or ray tracing [ 45 ].…”