Bridge Damage Detection with Support Vector Machine in Accelerometer-Based Wireless Sensor Network

Purpose This paper proposes an in-network vibration data processing using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) leveraging Machine Learning (ML) for damage detection and localization. The study also presents the ML algorithms comparison that is suitable to be deployed in WSN and implemented the proposed cluster-based WSN topology on the bridge simulation test. Methods The bridge vibration data was acquired using accelerometer-based wireless sensor nodes. The data collected are transformed using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to obtain fundamental frequencies and their corresponding amplitudes. The machine learning method i.e., Support Vector Machine (SVM) with linear and Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel was used to analyze the vibration data collected from the WSN. In-network data processing and cluster-based WSN topology is implemented and the programmable wireless sensor nodes is utilized in this study. Results The experiments were conducted using real programmable wireless sensor nodes and developed our test bed bridge which makes this work different from the previous studies. The classification and predicting results shows 97%, 96%, 97%, and 96% for accuracy, precision, recall rate, and f1-score, respectively. Conclusion Machine learning methods can potentially be combined with the vibration WSN for bridge damage detection and localization.