Design of a wireless sensor network for load and deformation reconstruction for technical inheritance of gentelligent structural components

Sensor-integrating, “gentelligent” components allow to “inherit” operational loads-data for design optimisations from one generation to the next. For area-wide acquisition and reliable transmission of this data, wireless sensor networks (WSN) are often used, but small sensor nodes for reconstructing deformations and loads, so-called shape sensing, are rarely considered as well as a methodical development of such sensor nodes. This paper presents the development of a small sensor node in accordance to the VDI 2206 for shape sensing with a prototype with strain gauges, HX711 A/D converters and an Arduino Nano 33 IoT microprocessor. An infrastructured WSN is built and tested on an aluminium part at a test rig. The shape sensing is carried out with three sensor nodes and the deformed shape is displayed on a server-website to demonstrate the functionality of the methodically developed WSN.