Real Time Damage Assessment

Abstract eng:
tructural Health Monitoring (SHM) comprises a number of procedures and tools that can be used to determine the status of serviceability of an instrumented structure immediately after an earthquake. This can be done remotely via the Internet or using any suitable communication link. SHM procedures can be used for a condition assessment to confirm whether the structure has been severely damaged, and if so, to determine the location and severity of the damage as well as the stability of the structure. Outcomes of SHM procedures applied to earthquake engineering can be helpful for decision makers to check structural systems, such as buildings, bridges and dams, after an earthquake to determine which structure is still operational and which one is out of commission, especially if such methods provide real-time, or near real-time information. The available methods for damage assessment using real-time information tend to be too complicated for a quick judgment of the structure’s status and most of them are based on mechanics of vibrations, which are not amenable to practicing civil engineers. The methods mainly identify the damaged element and the severity of damage, but no information is provided about the stability and serviceability of the structure. Therefore, procedures are needed that can provide a structural engineer with detailed and more understandable information about the status of a damaged structure. Such procedures can be developed by combining vibration methods and state-of-the-art structural analysis techniques. This paper presents a general review of the use of SHM in earthquake engineering applications, summarizes important developments on the subject and discusses the present limitations and challenges that need to be overcome in order to make SHM a reliable and efficient tool for assessing the safety of structures subjected to strong ground shaking.

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