Smart Auditing of Concrete Structure using IoT

Abstract:

Smart Audit Monitoring building structure is an IoT based application to make buildings smart enough to provide its health data to user and replace manual audit process of poor concrete building structure. During new construction, various sensors are installed inside concrete structure to measure key parameters such as temperature variation, strength of concrete, and cracks presents inside structure as suggested by (Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs). The collected data is sent to IOT cloud platform via wireless modules. Based on data processed and analyzed over a certain time period, structural condition of building can be predicted and immediate action can be taken without waiting for manual onsite testing.

Motivation:

With increasing growth in demand for real estate, construction of real estate has been at peak. With race among real estate constructor to supply the increasing demand, unfortunately the quality has been degraded to a great extent. Moreover, there is manual process for auditing which can be flawed by human errors. There have been many cases in my area where building collapse has taken countless life of innocents. This is where the idea of “SMART AUDITING OF REAL ESTATE” clicked in where the building itself provides its health data to government or secretary of society or individual of the society to take necessary action before any mishaps. This idea includes using Internet of Things at construction level or present structure where we install necessary sensors and equipment to monitor health of building. The data is transmitted wireless to the cloud which can be monitored and analyzed by each individual. This can be a checkpoint for people while buying a new property.

Working Principle: Two most important steps are measurement of quality of concrete and corrosion of steel rods used in structure.

1) Ultrasonic Pulse Width Oscillator:
This method uses a transmitter device which sends high frequency wave to receiver. Transmitter and receiver are placed between concrete walls. The distance between concrete structures is known as ‘D’, the time taken by wave from transmitter to receiver through concrete structure is measured as ‘T’.
Hence Velocity of wave inside concrete is calculated using formula V=D/T.

These sensors are installed at different level and position inside building structure and through algorithm and average data is recorded sent data are timely to IoT cloud platform for monitoring.

2) Monitoring steel corrosion using half cell potential technique:
The half-cell potential test is the only corrosion monitoring technique standardized by ASTM. It is used to determine the probability of corrosion within the rebar in reinforced concrete structures.

A reference electrode is connected to the other half-cell represented by the embedded rebar. By connecting that reference electrode to the reinforcing steel and placing the reference electrode on the surface of the concrete, it is possible to measure the potential difference between the two half-cells.

3) RFID
Each part of concrete will be attached with low power RFID device, this will help determine cracks or irregularity present in exact position.