Structural health monitoring: Closing the gap between research and industrial deployment

By Peter Cawley. 2018

351 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There has been a large volume of research on structural health monitoring since the 1970s but this research effort has yielded relatively few routine industrial applications. Structural health monitoring can include applications on very different structures with very different requirements; this article splits the subject into four broad categories: rotating machine condition monitoring, global monitoring of large structures (structural identification), large area monitoring where the area covered is part of a larger structure, and local monitoring. The capabilities and potential applications of techniques in each category are discussed. Condition monitoring of rotating machine components is very different to the other categories since it is not strictly concerned with structural health. However, it is often linked with structural health monitoring and is a relatively mature field with many routine applications, so useful lessons can be read across to mainstream structural health monitoring where there are many fewer industrial applications. Reasons for the slow transfer from research to practical application of structural health monitoring include lack of attention to the business case for monitoring, insufficient attention to how the large data flows will be handled and the lack of performance validation on real structures in industrial environments. These issues are discussed and ways forward proposed; it is concluded that given better focused research and development considering the key factors identified here, structural health monitoring has the potential to follow the path of rotating machine condition monitoring and become a widely deployed technology.

Subfields: Civil and Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e37a63d0e5f303a0d7b03994bc6baf22cb23e5eb

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Civil and Structural Engineering

1. Ignasi Fernandez
2. Daniel Straub
3. A. Kamariotis
4. Eleni N. Chatzi
5. Rasmus Rempling
6. Carlos Gil Berrocal
7. Iason Papaioannou

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Daniel Straub
2. A. Kamariotis
3. Eleni N. Chatzi

Citations in the corpus

• Crack monitoring in reinforced concrete beams by distributed optical fiber sensors (2020, background): “However, despite the great efforts made in the research and development of SHM systems, see e.g. (Cawley, 2018; Seo, Hu, & Lee, 2016), due to the lack of reliable, scalable and affordable monitoring solutions, SHM is not yet implemented as a standard practice in most civil engineering structures…”
• A systematic review of convolutional neural network-based structural condition assessment techniques (2021, neutral): “(Cawley 2018).”
• A framework for quantifying the value of vibration-based structural health monitoring (2022, methodology): “Typically, intermittent visual inspection schemes are adopted by operators, with targeted non-destructive evaluations also complementing inspection when needed [5].”