Smart Sensor for Online Vibration Monitoring of Hydropower Dam Based on Butterfly MEMS Accelerometer

Aiming at the increasing demand for smart sensor in online vibration monitoring of hydropower dam, a smart sensor is developed using MEMS sensing technology and distributed networking technology. Equipped with a high performance Cortex-A55 SOC and a low power Cortex-M3 MCU, the smart sensor adopts a novel software and hardware architecture to achieve real-time vibration monitoring and edge computing. In order to achieve self-identification, self-description, and interoperability of the smart sensor, a tailored IEC61850 communication model is used. The vibration of the hydropower dam is sensed by three single axis butterfly MEMS accelerometers inside the smart sensor. Experiments were undertaken to verify the performance of the smart sensor within the range of 0.5 Hz to 50 Hz. A sensitivity amplitude linearity of 3 % and sensitivity frequency response of 5% is achieved.