Innovative Condition Monitoring Methods for Civil Structures

Dear Colleagues,

Although structural engineering knowledge and construction standards are very rapidly evolving to higher safety levels, there are still tens of disasters and collapses every year. Furthermore, most of them occur without any warning, while managers are planning maintenance actions.

Thus, the structural health and condition monitoring of buildings and infrastructures is a mandatory task if we want to avoid malfunctioning, service interruptions, failures, and casualties. However, the automatic detection of structural critical states is far from being a well-established and sound management tool.

Typical changes of parameters in ageing and damaged structures are very small and draped by environmental and operational variables (EOVs), which can affect the reliability of damage detection. Sometimes, the condition monitoring activity begins when the construction is already damaged, and therefore markers of a reference healthy state do not exist.

The present call for papers is aimed at making an updated sketch of the state-of-the-art in condition monitoring and damage detection for civil structures. Many research lines exist that combine different sensing tools, feature extraction systems, and damage evaluation scales, but with the same goal of predicting the remaining safety margin of a given structure. Papers concerning the application of automated operational modal analysis (OMA), its applications to damage identification (in terms of detection, localization, and quantification), theoretical studies, numerical simulations, as well as practical applications included in the following topic list will be considered for publication.

Finally, continuous evaluation for in-service structures is significantly more complex than the episodic damage evaluation of structures after accidental situations like earthquake, fire, or typhoon, and therefore special attention will be given to studies on continuous monitoring.

Potential contributions to this journal Special Issue are in the broad field of structural health monitoring within the following topics. Other topics will be eventually considered if proposed:

• Smart sensors, sensor data fusion, sensing techniques, and advanced sensor networks;
• Advanced signal processing, cleaning, filtering, and big data analysis;
• Linking measurements with damage states;
• Parameters pointing out service failures and pre-collapse states;
• Algorithms for feature extraction and automatic damage detection;
• Damage detection, localization, and tracking of modal parameters under environmental changes;
• Special applications of automated operational modal analysis;
• Machine-learning-based SHM data analysis and condition assessment for bridges;
• Dynamic identification of buildings and infrastructures;
• Applications to masonry, reinforced concrete, steel, and composite structures;
• Case histories and field tests for structure assessment or damage identification;
• New trends for the visual inspection of structures and infrastructures.

Contributions reviewing the state-of-the-art of a selected monitoring aspect are particularly welcome.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Benedetti
Guest Editor

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• structural health monitoring
• dynamic identification
• damage detection
• smart sensors
• sensing techniques
• advanced signal processing
• automated operational modal analysis
• continuous monitoring
• neural networks
• machine learning
• case histories
• field tests
• unmanned inspection
• monumental buildings
• bridge management
• maintenance planning