Structural Health Monitoring of civil engineering construction with an innovative device

In this thesis will be treated one of the key points of innovation in the structure these days. Structural Health Monitoring has had an exponential increase in the evaluation of deformation, stresses, and remaining life of the structure. In particular, a new branch of this field is dedicated to innovation and to different methods that can increase the efficiency in the collection of data from new or existing structures and convert this into forecasts for the performance of the buildings. This paper will focus in particular on one of them which is a new device called Smart Steel System (S3) (Tondolo, 2016) that is a low cost-high performance device able to convert local variations into the evaluation of stress and deformation of the structure. These elements consist of a Micro Electro-Mechanic System installed into a cavity dig into the rebars dislocated in the reinforcement of a reinforced concrete element. This system through the evaluation of the variation of pressure and temperature, using the simple ideal gas law, is able to convert these values into strain deformations, obtaining the state of stress and solicitations from them. A comparison between the different innovative systems for monitoring will be discussed in the first chapter, followed by a comparison of the sensitivity of the principal systems alongside the S3. After an experimental phase, the new system has been evaluated through a tensile test where the improvements have been classified and paired with the previous analysis (Battistoni, 2018; Bandinelli, 2020). The application of the technology in a real structure has been carried out by comparing the results of deformations related to the loads applied to the one obtained from a Finite Element Model. This, alongside the calculation of the stresses in the section of the beams with the maximum model, will have key importance in the interpretation of the data daily collected by the devices installed in the bridge. The data collected confirmed the validity and the robustness of the device solid both for existing and new structures.