Feasibility study on monitoring the structural health of a transmission tower with controlled damage scenarios

The Smart Tower project, a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Elia, aims to explore the application of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for transmission towers. The tower was equipped with a variety of sensors, including Strain Gauges (SG), Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTD), Piezoelectric Transducers (PZT), accelerometers (ACC), and Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors. It was then subjected to controlled damage scenarios to simulate typical failure modes. The study analyzed the collected sensor data to assess its suitability for SHM. The results revealed that the acceleration data features were sensitive to the simulated damage, with modal parameters identifying almost all relevant damage instances. However, minor damage to specific areas, such as bolt loosening, affected only high-frequency modes and required sensors in close proximity to the damage. Conversely, significant damage, like bar removal, impacted low-frequency modes and was detectable by all accelerometers. Although the PZT sensor was able to identify multiple modes, it could not detect the simulated damage due to its location. These findings illustrate the potential of SHM for transmission towers and underscore the importance of sensor placement in detecting specific types of damage.