STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING

As aerospace, civil, and mechanical engineering structures begin to age, it is important to verify their structural integrity and long-term reliability. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) plays a key role in the prevention of catastrophic failure, in improving the safety of structures and infrastructure, and in reducing the downtime and costs associated with their maintenance. The research I performed through the years aimed to develop novel methodologies using a wide spectrum of investigation techniques such as three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC), Structure from Motion (SfM), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to assess the conditions of different kind of large-sized engineering systems. In particular, investigations performed on structures such as bridges, railroad tracks, and utility-scale wind turbine blades are described in the following links:

• Demonstration of vision-based and photogrammety systems for railroad tracks assessment and inspection using 3D-DIC systems and SfM techniques.
• Design of a 3D-DIC system for bridges inspection using UAVs.
• Implementation of a multi-camera 3D-DIC system for utility-scale wind turbine blades monitoring and certification during static and dynamic testing.

While publications providing an overview of these activities can be downloaded using the following links:

• Niezrecki er al., (2018), Digital image correlation techniques for NDE and SHM
• Sabato et al., (2018), Advancements in structural health monitoring using vision-based and optical techniques