The ultimate goal of Structural Health Monitoring is to predict the remaining life of structures, such as a bridges, railroads, roads, viaducts or buildings.

Although that goal is still an open question, a few intermediate steps of damage identification have been defined ¹, where predicting the remaining service life is the last one:

1. identifying the existence of damage;
2. identifying damage location;
3. identifying the extent and type of damage;
4. predicting the remaining service life of the structure.

These steps are also called levels of damage identification. Current methods can perform level 1 and 2 damage identification, and even level 3 when we include models of the degradation behavior of the structure.

Laser Doppler Vibrometer

• modal identification and assessment of JR Shinkansen viaducts
• monitoring of cable-supported bridges

Wireless Sensors

We are also doing research to apply the newest wireless sensor technologies to structural health monitoring to civil structures, including:

• developing damage identification methods to take advantage of the computational capabilities of wireless sensors
  Here is a poster presenting the research (PDF 552KB, December 2006).
• starting to monitor buildings on the campus of the University of Tokyo (in construction)

Integrated Accelerometer Systems

(in construction)

• Train Intelligent Monitoring System (TIMS)
• Vehicle Intelligent Monitoring System (VIMS)

1. Scott W. Doebling, Charles R. Farrar, and Michael B. Prime. A summary review of vibration-based damage identification methods. The Shock and Vibration Digest, 30(2):91-105, 1998.