CESS Seminar - Structural Health Monitoring of Concrete Infrastructure Employing a Holistic Stress Wave-based Approach
Event details
| Date | 06.05.2022 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Thomas Schumacher, Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at Portland State University |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract
The goal of structural health monitoring (SHM) is to use sensors and instrumentation to gather quantitative data from a structural system in order to infer on its performance and condition changes, and thus enable an owner to make informed maintenance and repair decisions. To this end, acoustic emission monitoring has been proposed as a passive technique to capture fracture processes within a structure. Recently, active ultrasonic stress wave monitoring has been evaluated, offering high sensitivity to minute and slowly varying changes in a structure such as variations in internal stress and temperature, or development of micro-cracking due to aging and degradation. Both techniques can be performed with the same instrumentation and are fundamentally based on the same physics, which is wave motion in solids. Each technique can provide important insights into processes occurring within a structure. In this seminar, a combined approach that takes advantage of the strengths of both techniques is discussed that offers new opportunities for SHM of concrete infrastructure. A general introduction and the motivation for SHM are discussed first, followed by some select experiments and field tests the presenter has performed over the last 15 years, highlighting the complementary nature of these two techniques. Opportunities for applications and further research conclude the seminar.
Biography
Thomas Schumacher is currently an Invited Professor at the MCS Laboratory at EPFL-ENAC and an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at Portland State University. After earning his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at the Berner Fachhochschule, Switzerland in 2000, he worked as a structural and project engineer for a consulting firm for five years. He left design practice in 2004 to expand his education abroad and earned M.S. and PhD Degrees from Oregon State University in 2006 and 2010, respectively. Schumacher is a licensed professional engineer (PE) in the State of Delaware and an active member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI); he currently serves as the Chair of ACI Committee 444–Structural Health Monitoring. His primary research interests are in the area of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of civil infrastructure with a focus on concrete structures. In particular, he is interested in stress wave and vibration-based methods such as acoustic emission and ultrasonic monitoring and impulse response testing, respectively. He has also been collaborating with faculty at the University of Delaware to develop a novel distributed carbon nanotube-based sensor that can be integrated with structural composites to form a self-sensing reinforcement to repair and rehabilitate concrete as well as steel structures. Additionally, he is interested in video-based techniques to monitor structural motion. Schumacher’s ultimate goal is to integrate quantitative information from NDE measurements into systems management tools allowing agencies to make informed maintenance and repair decisions.
The goal of structural health monitoring (SHM) is to use sensors and instrumentation to gather quantitative data from a structural system in order to infer on its performance and condition changes, and thus enable an owner to make informed maintenance and repair decisions. To this end, acoustic emission monitoring has been proposed as a passive technique to capture fracture processes within a structure. Recently, active ultrasonic stress wave monitoring has been evaluated, offering high sensitivity to minute and slowly varying changes in a structure such as variations in internal stress and temperature, or development of micro-cracking due to aging and degradation. Both techniques can be performed with the same instrumentation and are fundamentally based on the same physics, which is wave motion in solids. Each technique can provide important insights into processes occurring within a structure. In this seminar, a combined approach that takes advantage of the strengths of both techniques is discussed that offers new opportunities for SHM of concrete infrastructure. A general introduction and the motivation for SHM are discussed first, followed by some select experiments and field tests the presenter has performed over the last 15 years, highlighting the complementary nature of these two techniques. Opportunities for applications and further research conclude the seminar.
Biography
Thomas Schumacher is currently an Invited Professor at the MCS Laboratory at EPFL-ENAC and an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at Portland State University. After earning his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at the Berner Fachhochschule, Switzerland in 2000, he worked as a structural and project engineer for a consulting firm for five years. He left design practice in 2004 to expand his education abroad and earned M.S. and PhD Degrees from Oregon State University in 2006 and 2010, respectively. Schumacher is a licensed professional engineer (PE) in the State of Delaware and an active member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI); he currently serves as the Chair of ACI Committee 444–Structural Health Monitoring. His primary research interests are in the area of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of civil infrastructure with a focus on concrete structures. In particular, he is interested in stress wave and vibration-based methods such as acoustic emission and ultrasonic monitoring and impulse response testing, respectively. He has also been collaborating with faculty at the University of Delaware to develop a novel distributed carbon nanotube-based sensor that can be integrated with structural composites to form a self-sensing reinforcement to repair and rehabilitate concrete as well as steel structures. Additionally, he is interested in video-based techniques to monitor structural motion. Schumacher’s ultimate goal is to integrate quantitative information from NDE measurements into systems management tools allowing agencies to make informed maintenance and repair decisions.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Brice Lecampion (GEL) & Prof. Alexandre Alahi (VITA)
Contact
- Prof. Brice Lecampion (GEL)