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In-Depth Information
FIGURE 9.8: Structural design and monitoring life cycle.
9.2.1 Integrated Grid-Sensor Network Framework for Struc-
tural Engineering
The integrated grid-sensor network framework for structural engineering
embeds both grid computing environments for parallel adaptive finite element
analysis (FEA) and WSNs for SHM. The framework offers seamless analysis,
design, and monitoring for structural health within a single life cycle. This ap-
proach introduces a new level of sophistication into the management of com-
plex and often very expensive engineering structures. Furthermore, the com-
bination of real-life information obtained from the sensors and the theoretical
structure information developed using finite element analysis can lead to fur-
ther economies in the structural design. The integrated framework combines
a WSN and a grid environment in a single architectural platform. This frame-
work enables the structural analyses to be farmed out to the computational
grid community and provides continuous monitoring for such analyses (and
other SHM applications) using a WSN. This framework requires an adaptive
system architecture that is able to provide real-time or near real-time commu-
nication between the WSN and the computational grid. Furthermore, rapid
structural analysis, design, and monitoring require fast processing with large
storage capacity for storing real-time structural information generated by the
network. These requirements can be delivered using existing computational
grid technology, such as the commodity grid described in Section 8.1.2.
The system architecture for this integrated framework implements a com-
modity grid and a high-speed WSN-to-grid network. Figure 9.9 presents this
architecture.
The computational grid for this framework also takes into account the data
storage capability, as shown in this figure. Note that the grid environment can
be further extended to include multiple compute grids. In addition, grid proxy
is implemented to ensure that other WSN networks are able to utilize the grid
for their structural health analysis and design. Therefore, this framework can
act as a shared commodity for the entire structural engineering community.
