Smart sensor data from tracking the displacement of a physical analogue of a large wood dam in laboratory experiments

The physical analogue model of an LW dam was composed of a single hollow wooden dowel installed in a flume using a supporting frame. Two aluminium connections placed at the ends of the wooden dowel were used to mount the wooden dowel on the supporting frame and meant simple modes of movements could be singled out, namely rotation, vertical displacements, and horizontal displacements.

The motion of the LW dam under a range of different conditions was monitored using an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer which were installed within the longitudinal borehole of the wooden dowel. The accelerometer and gyroscope had an acquisition frequency set at 59.5 Hz, whereas the magnetometer recorded at 5 Hz. The sensor was equipped with an additional accelerometer measuring continuously; when the acceleration exceeded the user-defined threshold set at 390 mg, the sensor activated and started recording. Each experiment was repeated 10 times and the raw data from each of these experiments were stored in the ‘df_UC.csv’ files.

The raw data were processed to produce the measurements in the ‘df_UC_cal.csv’ files. First, the magnetometer data were upsampled to keep the same number of entries for each sensor. Second, each sensor was calibrated. Third, the orientation angles were computed combining the readings of accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer by a built-in function from the Python library AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System). Gravity compensation was applied to derive linear acceleration and gravity acceleration. The total, linear and gravity acceleration in the earth system along the x and y direction were also calculated using simple transformations. More details are available in the ReadMe.docx.

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Smart sensor data from tracking the movements of wooden dowels, a cobble and a physical analogue of large wood dam in laboratory experiments