Researchers from the Smart Management of Infrastructure Laboratory (SMILab), located in the Center for Advanced Research Computing at The University of New Mexico, have developed a new strain sensor as a part of the Low-Cost Efficient Wireless Intelligent Sensors (LEWIS) project. The new sensor, called the LEWIS-S, is easy to use, wireless, and can be offered at about 5% of the cost of standard commercial strain sensing equipment.
SMILab director and assistant professor Fernando Moreu noted, “Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has been receiving significant attention in the community as a means to quantify the different levels of performance and safety of structural systems, communities, and emergency responses. Strain sensors can measure the stresses of structures in normal loads or extreme loads and report [to] owners or communities about their condition. One of the cores of sensor systems are the data acquisition systems that enable collecting data of interest for planners, managers, and decision-makers.”