Intelligent Sensors with Application to Identify the Steel Cable Forces

The cable plays a more and more important role in civil engineering recently. As an effective construction member, cable is used in many long-span spatial structures. The cable tension measurement is required in the construction control, assessment and long-term monitoring of cable-supported structures. The academic wireless sensing prototype co-developed at Stanford University and the University of Michigan is characterized by a powerful computational core and low power consumption characteristics. Two embedded engineering algorithm, namely the fast Fourier transform algorithm and the peak-picking algorithm, are implemented in the wireless sensing and to identify the frequencies of cables. Moreover, as a conventional method for cable tension measurement, the Fourier Transform can only be used in the static cable tension force test, but not dynamic cable tension test. It represents the intrinsic dynamic properties of cables. In this paper, wavelet transform tool that has the time-frequency analysis ability is used to analyze the signal, and obtain the cable tension dynamic change along with the time.