• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.151-161
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• 2017

A new method is developed to estimate road profile in order to estimate IRI based on the ASTM standard. This method utilizes an accelerometer and a Dynamic Tire Pressure Sensor (DTPS) to estimate road roughness. The accelerometer measures the vertical axle acceleration. The DTPS, which is mounted on the tire's valve stem, measures dynamic pressure inside the tire while driving. Calibrated transfer functions are used to estimate road profile using the signals from the two sensors. A field test was conducted on roads with different quality conditions in the city of Brockton, MA. The IRI values estimated with this new method match the actual road conditions measured with Pavement Condition Index (PCI) based on the ASTM standard, images taken from an onboard camera and passengers' perceptions. IRI has negative correlation with PCI in general since they have overlapping features. Compared to the current method of IRI measurement, the advantage of this method is that a) the cost is reduced; b) more space is saved; c) more time is saved; and d) mounting the two sensors are universally compatible to most cars and vans. Therefore, this method has the potential to provide continuous and global monitoring the health of roadways.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.835-851
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• 2015

This paper presents theoretical and experimental evaluation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) capability of piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) at elevated temperatures. This is important because the technologies for structural sensing and monitoring need to account for the thermal effect and compensate for it. Permanently installed PWAS transducers have been One of the extensively employed sensor technologies for in-situ continuous SHM. In this paper, the electro-mechanical impedance spectroscopy (EMIS) method has been utilized as a dynamic descriptor of PWAS behavior and as a high frequency standing wave local modal technique. Another SHM technology utilizes PWAS as far-field transient transducers to excite and detect guided waves propagating through the structure. This paper first presents how the EMIS method is used to qualify and quantify circular PWAS resonators in an increasing temperature environment up to 230 deg C. The piezoelectric material degradation with temperature was investigated and trends of variation with temperature were deduced from experimental measurements. These effects were introduced in a wave propagation simulation software called Wave Form Revealer (WFR). The thermal effects on the substrate material were also considered. Thus, the changes in the propagating guided wave signal at various temperatures could be simulated. The paper ends with summary and conclusions followed by suggestions for further work.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.89-91
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• 2004

In SCADA systems, an RTU is a device installed at a remote location that collects data, codes the data into a format that is transmittable and transmits the data back to a central station, or MTU. An RTU also collects information from the master device and implements processes that are directed by master device. RTUs are equipped with input channels for sensing or metering, output channels for control, indication or alarms and a communications port. In general, the data are transmitted via a wired communication infrastructure such as RS422 or RS485 between RTU and MTU. But, limited range of wired communication doesn't allow the system to cover remote areas over the limitation, and building a wired communication network is not easy in the circumstances. In this Paper, we design and implement a smart cost-effective Web-RTU that can communicate with MTU via Web. Web is of benefit to the Web-RTU, because it is not only free from the distance limitations, but also is built easily and cost-effectively wherever Internet resources are available. Additionally, Web can be easily applied to the SCADA system with the development of hardware and software for communications. The Web-RTU has a program memory, a data memory and a RAM inside, and uses Atmega128, low-cost 8 bit micro-processor with eight AI(Analog Input). It performs well enough to implement all existing roles of RTU.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.19-28
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• 2016

Social costs analysis seeks to reveal the environmental effects of transportation policy. It delivers a sense of the effects of the public's daily travel and the costs that are or would be incurred from individual trips. Moreover, the accumulated total number of trips will uncover the effects of travel on society. This article shows the quantitative analysis of the economic outcomes of travel using social costs estimation methods. In order to support urban planning tasks, this research implemented analysis tool for social costs estimation by travel behavior. For a case study, a jave based application which can convert people's trip data into social costs is developed. the application used for simulating student-housing effects by estimating social costs changes. The analysis included the attributes, building scale and locational changes of the student housing as well as transforms of the students' trips.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.75-80
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• 2002

The mainly used technique to rectify satellite images with distortion is to develop a mathematical relationship between the pixel coordinates on the image and the corresponding points on the ground. By defining the relationship between two coordinate systems, a polynomial model is designed and various linear transformations are used. These GCP based geometric correction has performed overall plane to plane mapping. In the overall plane mapping, overall structure of a scene is considered, but local variation is discarded. The highly variant height of region is resampled with distortion in the rectified image. To solve this problem this paper proposed the TIN-based rectification on a satellite image. The TIN based rectification is good to correct local distortion, but insufficient to reflect overall structure of one scene. So, this paper shows the experimental result and the analysis of each rectification model. It also describes the relationship GCP distribution and rectification model. We can choose a geometric correction model as the structural characteristic of a satellite image and the acquired GCP distribution.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.93-105
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• 2011

This paper presents a flexible low-profile antenna sensor for fatigue crack detection and monitoring. The sensor was inspired by the sense of pain in bio-systems as a protection mechanism. Because the antenna sensor does not need wiring for power supply or data transmission, it is an ideal candidate as sensing elements for the implementation of engineering sensor skins with a dense sensor distribution. Based on the principle of microstrip patch antenna, the antenna sensor is essentially an electromagnetic cavity that radiates at certain resonant frequencies. By implementing a metallic structure as the ground plane of the antenna sensor, crack development in the metallic structure due to fatigue loading can be detected from the resonant frequency shift of the antenna sensor. A monostatic microwave radar system was developed to interrogate the antenna sensor remotely. Fabrication and characterization of the antenna sensor for crack monitoring as well as the implementation of the remote interrogation system are presented.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-67
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• 2011

Human state in human-machine systems highly affects the overall system performance, and should be detected and monitored. Physiological cues are essential indicators of human state and useful for the purpose of monitoring. The study presented in this paper was focused on developing a bio-inspired sensing system, i.e., Nano-Skin, to non-intrusively measure physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state. The paper is presented in three parts. The first part is to analyze the relationship between human state and physiological cues, and to introduce the conceptual design of Nano-Skin. Generally, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, operating force, blood alcohol concentration, sweat rate, and electromyography are closely related with human state. They can be measured through human-machine contact surfaces using Nano-Skin. The second part is to discuss the technologies for skin temperature measurement. The third part is to introduce the design and manufacture of the Nano-Skin for skin temperature measurement. Experiments were performed to verify the performance of the Nano-Skin in temperature measurement. Overall, the study concludes that Nano-Skin is a promising product for measuring physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.917-942
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• 2014

Multivariate statistics based damage detection algorithms employed in conjunction with novel sensing technologies are attracting more attention for long term Structural Health Monitoring of civil infrastructure. In this study, two practical data driven methods are investigated utilizing strain data captured from a 4-span bridge model by Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors as part of a bridge health monitoring study. The most common and critical bridge damage scenarios were simulated on the representative bridge model equipped with FBG sensors. A high speed FBG interrogator system is developed by the authors to collect the strain responses under moving vehicle loads using FBG sensors. Two data driven methods, Moving Principal Component Analysis (MPCA) and Moving Cross Correlation Analysis (MCCA), are coded and implemented to handle and process the large amount of data. The efficiency of the SHM system with FBG sensors, MPCA and MCCA methods for detecting and localizing damage is explored with several experiments. Based on the findings presented in this paper, the MPCA and MCCA coupled with FBG sensors can be deemed to deliver promising results to detect both local and global damage implemented on the bridge structure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.765-784
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• 2014

In comparison with conventional shape memory actuated structures, antagonistic shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators permits a fully reversible two-way response and higher response frequency. However, excessive internal stress could adversely reduce the stroke of the actuators under repeated use. The two-way shape memory effect might further decrease the range of the recovered strain under actuation of an antagonistic SMA actuator unless additional components (e.g., spring and stopper) are added to regain the overall actuation capability. In this paper, the performance of all four possible types of SMA actuation schemes is investigated in detail with emphasis on five key properties: recovered strain, cyclic degradation, response frequency, self-sensing control accuracy, and controllable maximum output. The testing parameters are chosen based on the maximization of recovered strain. Three types of these actuators are antagonistic SMA actuators, which drive with two active SMA wires in two directions. The antagonistic SMA actuator with an additional pair of springs exhibits wider displacement range, more stable performance under reuse, and faster response, although accurate control cannot be maintained under force interference. With two additional stoppers to prevent the over stretch of the spring, the results showed that the proposed structure could achieve significant improvement on all five properties. It can be concluded that, the last type actuator scheme with additional spring and stopper provide much better applicability than the other three in most conditions. The results of the performance analysis of all four SMA actuators could provide a solid basis for the practical design of SMA actuators.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.201-217
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• 2007

An active damage detection technique is introduced to locate damage in an isotropic plate using Lamb waves. This technique uses a time-domain energy model of Lamb waves in plates that the wave amplitude inversely decays with the propagation distance along a ray direction. Accordingly the damage localization is formulated as a least-squares problem to minimize an error function between the model and the measured data. An active sensing system with integrated actuators/sensors is controlled to excite/receive $A_0$ mode of Lamb waves in the plate. Scattered wave signals from the damage can be obtained by subtracting the baseline signal of the undamaged plate from the recorded signal of the damaged plate. In the experimental study, after collecting the scattered wave signals, a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is employed to extract the first scattered wave pack from the damage, then an iterative method is derived to solve the least-squares problem for locating the damage. Since this method does not rely on time-of-flight but wave energy measurement, it is more robust, reliable, and noise-tolerant. Both numerical and experimental examples are performed to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the method, and the results demonstrate that the estimated damage position stably converges to the targeted damage.