Design and prototyping of a MEMS-based crackmeter for structural monitoring

Crack measurement is an important technique in structural monitoring, which is presently implemented with macroscopic devices characterized by rather demanding power consumption requirements. Such devices, consequently, are not very well suited for wireless operation, which is particularly interesting for specific applications involving deployment of a number of crackmeters within large-scale ageing infrastructures with possibility of remote, on-demand sensor interrogation. This paper reports about the research work related to the design and prototyping of a novel crackmeter suited for wireless structural monitoring realized with silicon MEMS strain sensors with high resolution, very low power operation and small size.