TABLE OF CONTENTS Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an area of growing interest and worthy of new and innovative approaches. The United States spends more than $200 billion each year on the maintenance of plant, equipment, and facilities. Maintenance and repairs represents about a quarter of commercial aircraft operating costs. Out of approximately 576 600 bridges in the US national inventory, about a third are either structurally deficient and in need of repairs, or functionally obsolete and in need of replacement. The mounting costs associated with the aging infrastructure have become an on-going concern. Structural health monitoring systems installed on the aging infrastructure could ensure increased safety and reliability.
Structural health monitoring is an area of great technical and scientific interests. The increasing age of our existing infrastructure makes the cost of maintenance and repairs a growing concern. Structural health monitoring may alleviate this by replacing scheduled maintenance with as-needed maintenance, thus saving the cost of unnecessary maintenance, on one hand, and preventing unscheduled maintenance, on the other hand. For new structures, the inclusion of structural health monitoring sensors and systems from the design stage is likely to greatly reduce the life-cycle cost.
Structural health monitoring is an emerging research area with multiple applications. Structural health monitoring assesses the state of structural health and, through appropriate data processing and interpretation, may predict the remaining life of the structure. Many aerospace and civil infrastructure systems are at or beyond their design life; however, it is envisioned that...
