Non-contact smartphone-based monitoring of thermally stressed structures

Mehmet Sefa Orak, Amir Nasrollahi, Turgut Ozturk, David Mas, Belen Ferrer, Piervincenzo Rizzo*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The in-situ measurement of thermal stress in beams or continuous welded rails may prevent structural anomalies such as buckling. This study proposed a non-contact monitoring/inspection approach based on the use of a smartphone and a computer vision algorithm to estimate the vibrating characteristics of beams subjected to thermal stress. It is hypothesized that the vibration of a beam can be captured using a smartphone operating at frame rates higher than conventional 30 Hz, and the first few natural frequencies of the beam can be extracted using a computer vision algorithm. In this study, the first mode of vibration was considered and compared to the information obtained with a conventional accelerometer attached to the two structures investigated, namely a thin beam and a thick beam. The results show excellent agreement between the conventional contact method and the non-contact sensing approach proposed here. In the future, these findings may be used to develop a monitoring/inspection smartphone application to assess the axial stress of slender structures, to predict the neutral temperature of continuous welded rails, or to prevent thermal buckling.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1250
JournalSensors
Volume18
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Apr 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • Computer vision
  • Neutral temperature
  • Nondestructive testing
  • Smartphone technology
  • Structural health monitoring
  • Thermal stress

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