การประยุกต์ใช้ระบบกลไฟฟ้าจุลภาคเพื่อพัฒนามาตรวัดการเคลื่อนตัวแนวราบในที่ / ชิตณุพงศ์ ชัยสุขนิพัทธ์ = Application of Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) for development of in-place inclinometer / Chittanupong Chaisukniphat
Inclinometers are used in geotechnical works to monitor lateral deformations of braced excavations, retaining walls, slopes and landslide areas. Conventional inclinometer measurement is done by lowering a probe into a grooved casing and reading the inclination at prescribed intervals as the probe is drawn upwards. This study aims to develop an automated inclinometer system for continuous monitoring from domestically available electronic parts. The developed equipment will provide significant savings in terms of equipment, material and operating costs. This thesis explains the design and development of an inclinometer from a microcontroller chip, a tri-axial accelerometer sensor. One of an improvement in this study was made by using an electronic compass to detect the twist of grooved cases which was not possible by conventional equipments. The sensor and compass were installed in an aluminum pipe with a diameter of 1 inch. Two sets of guided wheels were attached to the pipe in a similar way as conventional probes. The distance between guide wheels was 50 cm. In addition to the sensor head, a computer code was also written to read and record the inclination and azimuth of the sensor head. The efficiency of developed system was evaluated by comparing its measurements with those obtained by a conventional inclinometer. The trend of lateral movement observed from both equipments was in a fair agreement. However the error of developed device was still higher than practical standard. Nonetheless, it is supposed that this error can be minimized by upgrading the microcontroller and accelerometer chips to some higher classes. For instance, replace the adopted 10bit ADC microcontroller by 16bit ADC ones.
