Comparison of smartphone accelerometer applications for structural vibration monitoring

Abstract

Recent generations of smartphones offer accelerometer sensors as a standard feature. While this has led to the development of a number of related applications (apps), there has been no study on their comparative or individual performance against a benchmark. This paper investigates the comparative performance of a number of smartphone accelerometer apps amongst themselves and to a calibrated benchmark accelerometer. A total of 12 apps were selected for testing out of 90 following an initial review. The selected apps were subjected to sinusoidal vibration testing of varying frequency and the response of each compared against the calibrated baseline accelerometer. The performance of apps was quantified using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and test of significance was carried out. The apps were then compared for a realistic dynamic scenario of measuring the acceleration response of a bridge due to the passage of a French Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) in a laboratory environment. © 2019 Techno-Press, Ltd.