Recent Research in Nondestructive Evaluation of Civil Infrastructures

TLDR

Structural health monitoring is essential for safety and reliability, analogous to medical monitoring where body signs indicate overall health and anomalies trigger further tests. The paper reviews recent National Science Foundation projects focused on nondestructive evaluation of civil infrastructures. The authors survey and analyze NSF‑funded research projects to outline current NDE approaches. The review highlights promising areas for nondestructive evaluation.

Abstract

Assessing the condition of a structure is necessary to determine its safety and reliability. Ideally, structural health monitoring should be similar to medical health monitoring of the body. In medical health monitoring, the life signs such as pulse and blood pressure give an overall indication of the overall health of the body. This is analogous to global structural health monitoring, in which damage to the structure can be identified by measuring changes in the global properties of the structure. Once the body signs show an anomaly, we do a battery of tests to determine the cause of the anomaly. Analogously in structural health monitoring, nondestructive evaluation (NDE) can be used to determine the nature of the damage. NDE methods to determine local damage are also becoming more accepted in practice. This paper describes some of the recent and current National Science Foundation projects in this area of research. Promising areas for NDE are identified.