Abstract
Force applied and location it occurred are of growing interest for smart buildings, particularly in the area of human activity. The ability to localize human activity through the vibrations caused by the activity on the structure has the potential to be a low-cost, privacy-respecting solution to areas of interest such as building occupancy estimations, customer flow through retail stores, and human fall detection. This paper introduces the Force Estimation and Event Localization (FEEL) Algorithm, which estimates the force of an impact that caused a structural vibration and additionally locates the location the impact occurred. The main feature of FEEL is that it does not require time synchronization like other time-of-flight techniques. FEEL was validated using the human-induced vibration benchmark data set totaling 3,500 impact events of seven different types at five different locations, and an additional 75 force hammer impacts. FEEL displayed 96.4% location accuracy and a force magnitude estimate accuracy of in a 99% confidence interval in the experiments.
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Data Availability Statement
All data used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 1450810. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work is also partially supported by a grant from the University of South Carolina Magellan Scholar Program.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 147 • Issue 3 • March 2021
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 17, 2019
Accepted: Sep 14, 2020
Published online: Dec 29, 2020
Published in print: Mar 1, 2021
Discussion open until: May 29, 2021
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Algorithms
- Benefit cost ratios
- Buildings
- Business management
- Client relationships
- Continuum mechanics
- Dynamics (solid mechanics)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering mechanics
- Financial management
- Forces (type)
- Human and behavioral factors
- Impact forces
- Mathematics
- Motion (dynamics)
- Practice and Profession
- Smart buildings
- Solid mechanics
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
- Vibration
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