Evaluation of the metrological performances of MEMS accelerometers to the aim of their application in Structural Health Monitoring

This paper deals with the calibration of MEMS accelerometers, looking forward to the employment of these kind of sensors in structural health monitoring applications. The presented results follow a previous work, where it has been shown that MEMS accelerometers performances are comparable to those of other commercial sensors in terms of sensitivity and frequency response. In the present paper some fundamental aspects, not yet considered, have been deeply analyzed, in order to complete the previous work. Therefore specific tests have been carried out to point out signal-to-noise ratio, low frequency response, temperature influence and transverse sensitivity. All these parameters are fundamental thinking about the MEMS accelerometers employment in modal analysis of civil structures that involve low acceleration amplitudes at low frequency. Having obtained a full mechanical calibration of MEMS accelerometers, accounting for their main metrological performances, a decision can be taken on the possibility to employ these sensors, with an obvious advantage in terms of cost and number of available measurement points.