Vibrations from construction activity, oil and gas exploration, drilling, and blasting can cause both cosmetic and structural damage to structures. Carrasquillo Associates (CA) is familiar with the levels of vibrations needed to cause damage to surrounding structures and has significant experience in structural vibration monitoring. CA can conduct structural vibration monitoring both at the source and at the structure and determine the decay function for predicting vibrations at other non-monitored structures. As part of structural vibration monitoring, CA regularly conducts inspections of structures before and after being subjected to vibrations to ensure they are not damaged. In addition, CA regularly inspects damaged structures to determine if vibrations were the cause of the observed damage.
For structural vibration monitoring, CA uses seismographs, as shown in Figure 1. A seismograph consists of a geophone, which contains an orthogonal arrangement of displacement transducers, and a control unit. In addition to a seismograph, CA can setup an alarm that triggers when vibration levels exceed a set threshold.
Figure 1: Seismograph for Structural Vibration Monitoring