ABSTRACT
Structural health monitoring (SHM) applications are gaining increasing attention because they enable the early detection and characterization of damage during a prevention phase. Furthermore, SHM can also provide useful information associated with the condition and performance of a structure over time. SHM applications require a network of sensors to measure various structural parameters. However, the high cost of the required sensors is considered to be a limitation for their implementation in structures with limited monitoring budget. This paper presents an alternative low-cost solution to decrease the high cost of instrumentation. LARA (Low-Cost Adaptable Reliable Accelerometer) is a novel low-cost triaxial accelerometer based on Arduino and Raspberry Pi technologies. This system has a sampling frequency of 333 Hz and a noise density of 51μg⁄√Hz. This work presents an experimental campaign for the Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) of a footbridge using two types of sensors: a low-cost prototype LARA and a commercial one (HI-INC), in order to evaluate the reliability of the data acquired by LARA and to validate it as a low-cost accelerometer for SHM purposes.
