Mitigation strategies for structural health monitoring and assessment - recent trend

Abstract

Structural health assessment is an age-old challenge. Structural health monitoring is relatively recent topic of interest. However, despite enormous developments, successful implementations of these concept are limited. In the past, identification of defect locations, numbers, and their severity were emphasized using structural behavior at the time of inspection assuming the whole structure was inaccessible for visual and other forms of assessment. To minimize the economic losses, only part of a structure was inspected, and the information was used to assess the health of the whole structure without disrupting its normal operation. Due to inherent complexities, the area has attracted a multidisciplinary research interest. Recent catastrophic failures of older or buildings under construction added a new dimension to the overall problem. In this scenario, types of defects, locations, and their severity were known. Rehabilitation actions were proposed but not acted upon in a timely manner due to lack of resources. The additional mitigation strategies for this situation has yet to be developed. Some of the related issues include who will inspect, their qualifications, legal standings of the recommendations made by them, acceptable time period to implement their recommendations, and penalty for not carrying out their suggestions, etc. In India, the initiation of a Professional Engineering license requirement, similar to the U.S., is suggested by the author to address this complicated problem.