Advances in Monitoring of Civil Infrastructure:
from Research to Engineering Practice
B.F.Spencer, Jr.
Nathan M. and Anne M. Newmark Endowed Chair of Civil Engineering
Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: The ability to continuously monitor the integrity of civilinfrastructure in real time offers the opportunity to reduce maintenance andinspection costs, while providing for increased safety to the public.Furthermore, after natural disasters, it is imperative that emergency facilitiesand evacuation routes, including bridges and highways, be assessed for safety.Indeed, the ASCE Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025 states engineers of thefuture will be “relying on and leveraging real-time access to living databases,sensors, diagnostic tools, and other advanced technologies to ensure informeddecisions are made.”
This seminar discusses recent advances inmonitoring of civil infrastructure at the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign. First, interdisciplinary efforts to create and deploywireless smart sensors will be introduced. Following an overview of thetechnical challenges encountered and the solutions developed, two full-scaledeployments will be presented. The first is for the Jindo Bridge, acable-stayed bridge in South Korea with a 344m main span. The seconddeployment is for the Dubai-I, a 250-m diameter Ferris wheel. Subsequently, research on the use of computer vision for monitoring of civilinfrastructure will be presented. Applications explored include crack detectionin concrete structures, automatic structural damage classification, structuralresponse monitoring, and motion magnification. Finally, the potential use ofexisting commercial UAVs and cameras to measure the displacement of therailroad bridges under in-service train loads is considered. These studiesdemonstrate the tremendous potential of structural health monitoring formanaging civil infrastructure on a national level.
BriefBio: B.F. Spencer, Jr. received his Ph.D.in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign in 1985. He worked on the faculty at the University of NotreDame for 17 years before returning to the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, where he currently holds the Nathan M. and Anne M. NewmarkEndowed Chair in Civil Engineering and is the Director of the NewmarkStructural Engineering Laboratory. His research hasbeen primarily in the areas of structural health monitoring, structuralcontrol, cyberinfrastructure applications, stochastic fatigue, stochasticcomputational mechanics, and natural hazard mitigation. Dr. Spencer hasdirected more than $50M in funded research and published more than 700technical papers/reports, including two books. He was the first to study anddesign magnetorheological (MR) fluid dampers for protection of structuresagainst earthquakes and strong winds, overcoming the inherent limitations ofexisting passive energy dissipation systems, as well as power-dependent activecontrol systems, which are in common use today. He led NSF's George E. BrownNetwork for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) system integrationproject, which constituted the nation's first engineering cyberinfrastructureinitiative. He was the PI on the NEES MUST-SIM facility at the University ofIllinois focusing on hybrid simulation. His most recent research on structuralhealth monitoring systems and smart wireless sensors integrates advancedcomputing tools with smart sensors, to provide a functional platform withself-interrogation capabilities. He led the Jindo Bridge monitoring project inSouth Korea, which constitutes the world's largest deployment of wireless smartsensors to monitor civil infrastructure to date. Dr. Spencer has received numerous awards, includingthe ASCE Outstanding Instructor Award, the ASCE Norman Medal, the ASCE HousnerStructural Control and Monitoring Medal, the ASCE Newmark Medal, the Zhu KezhenInternational Lectureship Award, the ANCRiSST Outstanding Senior InvestigatorAward, the Structural Health Monitoring Person of the Year Award, the J.M. KoMedal of Advances in Structural Engineering, IASCM Takuji Kobori Prize, and theRaymond & Sidney Epstein Structural Engineering Faculty Award. Dr. Spencer is a Fellow of ASCE, aForeign Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the North American Editor inChief of Smart Structures and Systems, the Executive Managing Editor of thejournal of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration, the past presidentof the Asia-Pacific Network of Centers for Research in Smart StructuresTechnology, and a DesignatedForeign Expert by China's State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.