Indirect structural health monitoring (iSHM) of transport infrastructure in the digital age

Workshop reportCopyright © Joint Research Centre (European Commission). The existing European motorway infrastructure network is prone to ageing and subject to natural events (e.g. climate change) and hazards (e.g. earthquakes), necessitating immediate actions for its maintenance and safety. Within this context, the structural health monitoring (SHM) framework allows a quantitative assessment of the structural integrity, serviceability and performance, facilitating better-informed decisions for the management of the existing infrastructure. The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) established the exploratory research project MITICA (Monitoring Transport Infrastructures with Connected and Automated vehicles) to investigate the opportunity to use novel methods for infrastructure motoring, aiming at the efficient maintenance of the European aging road infrastructure. This report summarizes the discussion and the outcomes of a workshop held at the JRC in Ispra (Italy) on June 6-7 2022, as part of the MITICA project. Considering the EU priority “A Europe fit for the digital age”, the workshop was dedicated to SHM and its application to civil infrastructure, focusing on innovative indirect structural health monitoring (iSHM) approaches that rely on the vehicle-bridge interaction and the deployment of sensor-equipped vehicles for the monitoring of the existing bridge infrastructure. The report aims to become a reference document in the area of iSHM using passing vehicles, for both scholars and policy makers

Damage Detection in Civil Engineering Structure Considering Temperature Effect

This paper concerns damage identification of a bridge located in Luxembourg. Vibration responses were captured from measurable and adjustable harmonic swept sine excitation and hammer impact. Different analysis methods were applied to the data measured from the structure showing interesting results. However, some difficulties arise, especially due to environmental influences (temperature and soil-behaviour variations) which overlay the structural changes caused by damage. These environmental effects are investigated in detail in this work. First, the modal parameters are identified from the response data. In the next step, they are statistically collected and processed through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Kernel PCA. Damage indexes are based on outlier analysis

Damage detection on a historic iron bridge using satellite DInSAR data

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) allows tracking the structural behavior in time and support decisions regarding, for instance, the need for maintenance and repair activities. Most traditional SHM systems require sensors that are directly applied to the structure to get insights into the structural performance. Satellite technologies can provide an appealing alternative to traditional SHM. They allow to measure displacements at a large scale and to follow their evolution without the need of directly accessing the structure. Further to this, the possibility to monitor large areas opens new avenues for the development of automatic alert systems able to issue an alarm and early-flag damaged structures. However, displacements of civil structures might also be induced by sources other than damage such as thermal or periodic hydrogeological variations. These can hinder the onset and development of damage or lead to false alarms if such displacements are erroneously interpreted as damages. This paper aims to present a new method for damage detection based on DInSAR measurements, that tackles both aspects providing reliable information about the onset of damage under environmentally changing conditions in a period corresponding to about twice the revisit time of the satellite. A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, namely the Palatino bridge in Rome, Italy. The satellite data are acquired by COSMO-SkyMed of the Italian Space Agency and consist of displacements of the observed structure recorded during a period spanning between 2011 and 2019. </jats:p

Comparison of risk-based methods for bridge scour management

Scour is a significant cause of bridge failure, and resulting bridge closures are likely to generate significant disruption to infrastructure networks. The management of scour-susceptible bridges is a significant challenge for improving transport resilience, but tends to be heuristic and qualitative. Such assessments often suffer from insufficient knowledge of key factors and require assumptions, which may increase their estimation and relative uncertainty. Analysis of publicly available technical documents reveals that various definitions of "risk" are adopted, as well as multiple approaches are applied. This paper has three objectives: (i) to illustrate the concept of risk in bridge scour management; (ii) to propose a simple scoring system to analyse existing risk-based approaches to manage bridge scour; and (iii) to analyse and compare such approaches on the basis of the obtained scores. A sample of nine documents containing bridge scour risk assessment practices or approaches was analysed using the developed rating system

Familial Tumoral Calcinosis: clinico-pathological findings and Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy of hard and soft tissues lesions

Objective: We report on the clinic-pathological features of Familial Tumoral Calcinosis (FTC), a rare disease of early childhood and adulthood, caused by mutations in fibroblast growth factor 23 and GalNAc transferase 3. It is a bone metabolism disorder with abnormal phosphate and calcium (calcinosis) deposits around the joints, in visceral and soft tissues. Case Presentation: A 17 year-old girl complaining for long-standing night leg pain, resistant to FANS therapy, had been diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta and was therefore undergoing bisphosphonates therapy. She was referred to our Dental Clinic for diffuse dental anomalies, maxillary hypoplasia and tooth roots inclusions and underwent combined surgical and orthodontic treatment. The surgical samples were used for conventional and Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopic (Nikon E-600) (CLSM) examination. Results: Microscopically several metaplastic micro and macro-calcificationin soft and periodontal tissue location were detected, along with a typical islands of homogenous, non tubular, dentino-osteoid calcified structures in dentinal tissues. Also, dentinal dysplasia with osteoid-like material, without incremental lines but with strong basophilia, intermingled with remnants of mature mucous connective tissue, was demonstrated. The diagnosis of FTC was confirmed by genetic analysis. Conclusions: CLSM helps to demonstrate distinct odontoblast and osteoblast anomalies in FTC that lead to the accumulation of atypical calcified tissues, responsible for the several clinical signs detected in the patient and formerly attributed to osteogenesis imperfecta