Structural health monitoring measures how a structure responds to loads and time. Accelerometers capture vibration modes that shift when stiffness changes, strain gauges record stress in critical members, tilt sensors watch for settlement, and crack sensors track known defects. Comparing current readings with a baseline, or with a model of the structure, reveals deterioration long before a visual inspection would.
Wireless, battery-powered nodes make it feasible on existing structures where cabling is impractical. The engineering challenges are the sampling rate, since vibration analysis needs far more data than temperature logging, and power, which pushes designers toward on-node processing that sends summaries rather than raw waveforms. It is often grouped with environmental monitoring in infrastructure programs because weather and traffic loads are part of the same analysis.
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