SENSORI E SISTEMI ELETTRONICI PER IL MONITORAGGIO STRUTTURALE ED ENERGETICO

Safeguarding human life and, more generally, the well-being of the individual are probably some of the highest and most noble goals that research pursues on a daily basis. Topics (and goals) of this thesis are on the one hand structural monitoring, on the other energy/environmental monitoring. Each of the two, albeit from different points of view, contribute precisely to place human being at the centre, safeguarding his life and health. For this purpose, innovative electronic systems have been developed. The common denominator is the basic structure of the system: a series of nodes that communicate with the master which in turn interfaces with the PC. From time to time, however, each system has been configured in an optimal way to respond to the specific need, through the careful choice of the particular devices used. To this aim, specific sub-topics have been addressed. From the point of view of structural monitoring, the focus was on the study of synchronization, damage index and modal frequencies. As far as synchronization is concerned, the experimental results have shown that, thanks to the use of the RS485 protocol, the developed system is able to monitor the structure with data synchronization from each node. From the point of view of the damage index, the experimental results show that the estimated damage index increases when the structure is disturbed. In particular, the damage indicator is increased to a maximum value of 24.65 when the structure is disrupted by a 2.5mm incision. As far as the study of modal frequencies is concerned, the novelty of the developed system lies in the fact that the data processing starts directly on board the nodes. The experimental results have shown that there is actually a significant variation of the modal frequencies when the conditions of the structure vary. In relation to energy/environmental monitoring, an interesting and innovative study was carried out on the potentially dangerous emissions of fine particles into the atmosphere within a building site. The experimental results show that the emissions of PM 2.5 and PM 10 detected during the demolition activity far exceed, in some moments, the threshold values. In fact, peaks as high as about 123 μg/m3 for PM 2.5 and over 1000 μg/m3 for PM 10 have been detected.