Research Highlight - Jerry Lynch

“Smart” Bridges Instrumented with Dense Networks of Wireless Sensors

Prof. Lynch in collaboration with researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) explore wireless sensors for bridge health monitoring.

Current sensors available for installation on bridges are expensive due in part to the need to install wires between sensors. A low-cost alternative to tethered sensors is direly needed to advance the commercial use of structural health monitoring (SHM).

The University of Michigan has pioneered the field of wireless sensors with Narada, a low-cost wireless sensor designed for installation in civil structures. Prof. Lynch and his students are collaborating with researchers at KAIST to validate the performance of the sensors on bridges in Korea. In addition, embedded data processing algorithms are being adopted for automated data interrogation when the wireless sensors are installed on the bridges.

The research is rapidly advancing the state-of-art in wireless sensors. Wireless sensors are considerably cheaper than wired sensors and offer on-board computing for sensor-based data processing.

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research (ONR)

Narada wireless sensors: a “smart” wireless sensor that can replace traditional tethered sensors at a small cost. Narada is being field tested on bridges and buildings in the United States and abroad.