WiAMS Project : DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A WIRELESS REAL-TIME MONITORING SYSTEM FOR STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY ASSESSMENT OF CONCRETE STRUCTURES USING A SMART PIEZOELECTRIC SENSOR NETWORK

Objectives

The quality of life in any urban environment is strongly affected by the safety and the functionality of its infrastructure. Any restriction in the access to public areas has a far reaching effect to the life of the society, to tourism or public opinion.

The current approach normally used to assess structural safety and/or physical damages on concrete structures consists of optical inspection and local investigations by laboratory measurements on cored samples and load carrying test. Thus, these techniques make it impossible to adopt desired standards for the quality and frequency of assessment.

Therefore in the WiAMS project, sensing techniques will be developed for the structural health monitoring of concrete structures. Recommendations and guidelines for the application and integration of the proposed innovative sensing system according to the type of materials, structures and buildings will be developed in close co-operation with end-users and will thus contribute to future standards of concrete building assessment.

Thus, it will help the end-users in the choice of the most appropriate investigation procedures at different level of application and for decision making on the development of refurbishment concepts. Multidisciplinary and multisectoral activities involving the principal stakeholders will highly improve the quality of sustainable construction and renovation of concrete structures and thus the competitiveness of the society.