Low-Cost Technologies Used in Corrosion Monitoring.

Globally, corrosion is the costliest cause of the deterioration of metallic and concrete structures, leading to significant financial losses and unexpected loss of life. Therefore, corrosion monitoring is vital to the assessment of structures' residual performance and for the identification of pathologies in early stages for the predictive maintenance of facilities. However, the high price tag on available corrosion monitoring systems leads to their exclusive use for structural health monitoring applications, especially for atmospheric corrosion detection in civil structures. In this paper a systematic literature review is provided on the state-of-the-art electrochemical methods and physical methods used so far for corrosion monitoring compatible with low-cost sensors and data acquisition devices for metallic and concrete structures. In addition, special attention is paid to the use of these devices for corrosion monitoring and detection for in situ applications in different industries. This analysis demonstrates the possible applications of low-cost sensors in the corrosion monitoring sector. In addition, this study provides scholars with preferred techniques and the most common microcontrollers, such as Arduino, to overcome the corrosion monitoring difficulties in the construction industry.

A Novel Wireless Low-Cost Inclinometer Made from Combining the Measurements of Multiple MEMS Gyroscopes and Accelerometers.

Structural damage detection using inclinometers is getting wide attention from researchers. However, the high price of inclinometers limits this system to unique structures with a relatively high structural health monitoring (SHM) budget. This paper presents a novel low-cost inclinometer, the low-cost adaptable reliable angle-meter (LARA), which combines five gyroscopes and five accelerometers to measure inclination. LARA incorporates Internet of Things (IoT)-based microcontroller technology enabling wireless data streaming and free commercial software for data acquisition. This paper investigates the accuracy, resolution, Allan variance and standard deviation of LARA produced with a different number of combined circuits, including an accelerometer and a gyroscope. To validate the accuracy and resolution of the developed device, its results are compared with those obtained by numerical slope calculations and a commercial inclinometer (HI-INC) in laboratory conditions. The results of a load test experiment on a simple beam model show the high accuracy of LARA (0.003 degrees). The affordability and high accuracy of LARA make it applicable for structural damage detection on bridges using inclinometers.