Nowadays, more goods are transported by road and rail than ever before. The closure of important traffic arteries and junctions causes immense economic damage and also poses a risk of danger. The Condition Monitoring of civil engineering structures and transport infrastructure therefore becomes particularly important as the structures age. The risk to persons can be significantly reduced by continuous Condition Monitoring, combined with assessment by engineers. The result is high availability of the infrastructure, the predictability of repairs and reduced repair costs. In the case of critical events, e.g., overloads, monitoring systems can provide metrological evidence for this and even close off structures for traffic in an emergency.
Challenges:
- Individual system design required for each structure
- Processing of a wide range of measured variables such as vibrations, temperatures or displacements
- Large structures require widely distributed measuring systems with synchronous data acquisition
- Varying accuracy requirements for the measured variables
- Reliable, continuous operation over many years
- Connectivity to cloud services and mobile telecommunication for the implementation of data storage, visualization and alarms
For manufacturers of monitoring systems, Beckhoff offers the right building blocks:
- PC-based control technology in the required performance class
- Modular I/O system for all analog sensors and digital signals, in the control cabinet or as an IP-protected box in the field
- Distributed, highly synchronous EtherCAT communication with cable lengths from 100 m to 20 km
- Wide range of products: from the simple 16-bit terminal to the calibrated 24-bit module
- Integrated diagnostics for EtherCAT devices and sensor connection for reliable long-term use
- Communication via OPC UA, MQTT, email and file transfer, among others
Further information about our technologies and products for structural monitoring can be found here: