Sensors Used in Structural Health Monitoring

In the last years, the occurrence of natural hazards around the world has evinced the necessity of having structural health monitoring schemes that can allow the continuous assessment of the structural integrity of the civil structures or infrastructures, in order to avoid potential economic or human loses; further, it also allows the application of new sensing technologies and signal processing algorithms. An important step in a structural health monitoring strategy is the appropriate selection of the sensor used to measure the required physical variable. Although several reviews have been published, they focus on presenting and/or explaining the methodologies and signal processing techniques used in structural health monitoring. This article presents a state-of-the-art review of the sensing technologies used in structural health monitoring. Further, some candidate sensor technologies with potential of use in this area are also reviewed, where the main issues that affect their implementation in real-life schemes are also discussed.