Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is an emerging field that focuses on active or passive evaluation of structural components of critical infrastructure facilities such as high-rise towers, power plants, bridges, reservoirs etc. during the construction phase and throughout its service life to minimize repair costs and detect the probability of failure of its components. The key objective of SHM is to provide engineers with valuable data which could assist them in making educated decisions regarding retrofitting or repairing specific components of critical infrastructure systems while developing a holistic understanding of the structural behavior.
Pictured to the left: Catastrophic structural collapse during the 1994 Northridge earthquake (source: USGS)
Hybrid health monitoring relies on acquiring large amounts of data using appropriate data acquisition systems, utilizing an array of sensors which are tailored to provide us with the necessary information pertaining to a particular set of structural distress parameters. The data is then assessed using statistical and probabilistic methods to quantify the extent of structural distress which can be utilized by structural engineers to determine appropriate damage mitigation/repair strategies. It is crucial to develop an instrumentation methodology and optimize the data collection process to reduce error andthe life cycle costs during the monitoring process.
The phases of hybrid SHM involve:
Our in-house image processing algorithms are capable of generating high fidelity graphics for structural distresses by stitching images captured by drones. Trained with distress mapping data sets, our algorithms can determine distress categories and parameters for possible resolution strategies. The progress of distress can be monitored over a period of time and compared with previously acquired data allowing us to determine effective active health monitoring strategies tailored for each project.
Our efficient SHM solutions will allow clients and local administrations to identify critical damage to ageing infrastructure assets and allow the prioritization of certain repairs over others to increase the service life of the structural components. Our solutions can also be applied in new construction to avoid higher repair costs in future by early diagnosis of critical distress.
Based on the capabilities of our IoT edge devices we are able to provide additional features including traffic monitoring systems for bridges, pothole reduction solutions for highways, water management systems, etc. The possibilities are endless with Diverse Software Solutions SmartLink.