Battery-free Displacement Monitoring for Safe Operation of Large-scale Utility Infrastructures

Purpose and goal:

We develop battery-free displacement monitoring solutions for large-scale energy infrastructure such as embankment dams. Those are not perfectly waterproof, some water always flows through them, washing away particles in the dam. Hence, the structural integrity of the dams should be constantly monitored by devices embedded in the dam to, e.g., discover structural displacements. Once deployed in the dam, however, the sensors are not reachable any more. Hence, battery-free solutions are required.

Expected results and effects:

The project’s problem owner, Vattenfall, has many other applications where battery-free sensors are of interest for displacement monitoring in large-scale energy infrastructures. Examples include nuclear power plants, rock bolts in underground infrastructures such as tunnels and gravity-based foundations of onshore wind power plants. In the long term, our solutions can be applied to these applications as well.

Approach and implementation:

Our work plan is divided into five work packages: WP1 is project management. The technical work is performed in two iterations starting with the technical WPs, WP2 (powering and communication) and WP3 (displacement monitoring). The results will be integrated in WP4 starting with a first iteration at Month 10.

When the integration has made sufficient progress, evaluation and validation will be started in WP5. After feedback WP4 and WP5 will feed back to WP2 and WP3 and the second iteration starts.