Sensor Fusion for Trajectory Reconstruction from Inertial Measurement Unit to Estimate Structural Residual Displacements

Sensor Fusion for Trajectory Reconstruction from Inertial Measurement Unit to Estimate Structural Residual Displacements

Earthquakes can strike the ground with tremendous force. This can cause structures to undergo inelastic deformations, resulting in critical issues about their safety. Thus, residual displacement measurements are effective indicators to evaluate structural performance after earthquakes. In this study, readings from inertial measurement units (IMUs) are exploited to estimate the spatial trajectories and displacements of structures through a sensor fusion technique with the quaternion calculation. To explore the workability of the sensor fusion technique, various simplified tests are carried out. The spatial translational accelerations and angular velocities are acquired from the IMU and converted into translational and rotational displacements. These displacements are also compared with and validated by values obtained from simulation results of the IMU sensor. As found in the results, the combination of the sensor fusion method with IMUs is applicable for the displacement estimation with some constraints, and this sensor fusion method is expected to be applied to estimate the earthquake-induced displacements of structures in the future.