Preface

Structural health monitoring has emerged as a viable tool for damage detection and preventive maintenance procedures for engineered structures. This book covers themes such as sustainable design, smart structural health monitoring, conservation of historic cultural heritage, advanced damage assessment techniques and reliability of monitored engineering systems. These themes are considered to augment conventional structural health monitoring with the objective of achieving a sustainable system design.

The book opens with a description of a new sensor design proposed for the aeronautics industry. This sensor is expected to enable maintenance operators to determine the load level seen by an engine links after hard landings. Infrared thermography is presented as a viable non-destructive tool in monitoring wooden cultural heritage structures, which is characterized as a friendly, noninvasive method that suits the nature of cultural heritage structures. The same technology is also proposed for non-destructive monitoring of concrete structures where a novel aperiodic thermal wave imaging technique is employed for testing and evaluating rebar corrosion in concrete structures. Ultrasonic guided waves technology is also proposed for metallic structures to support their integrity and maintenance management. Applications in pipelines and storage tanks, which are critical assets in the oil and gas industry, are considered. Frequency-based damage detection is considered for evaluating damaged concrete sleepers and its practical use is demonstrated through laboratory and field tests. Finally, a new generation of strain sensors in the form of wire/thread that can be incorporated into composite materials to detect damage are presented. The proposed microscale strain sensor consists of flexible, untwisted nylon yarn coated with a thin layer of silver using an electro-less plating process. All such applications are meant to introduce new trends and/or new applications of new and/or existing structural health monitoring techniques.

The editor would like to thank all contributors whose work is represented in this book and whose influences are expected to help in shaping the future of structural health monitoring.

> **Maguid H.M. Hassan** Dean of Engineering, The British University in Egypt (BUE)

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practice.

**2. Sustainable design**

**Chapter 1**

*Maguid H.M. Hassan*

are smart, optimum, and reliable.

systems are some of these aspects.

**1. Introduction**

Introductory Chapter: Advances in

Structural health monitoring has emerged as a viable tool for damage detection and preventive maintenance procedures. There is a wide range of proposed applications that were documented in the literature over the past two decades. Recently, the notion of sustainable design has emerged as an important attribute of all engineering designs. Sustainable design is defined as one that would result in systems that

In this book, the concept of sustainable design is the backbone of the design of a structural health monitoring system. Within the backdrop of the presented definition, this book attempts to present structural health monitoring as a tool that would result in a sustainable engineering system. There are several aspects that are now being introduced to the conventional notion of structural health monitoring which are expected to contribute to such objective. Smart systems, smart materials, wireless sensor networks, conservation of historic cultural heritage, and autonomous

The book explores the design of smart structural health monitoring systems, using smart technologies and/or materials. It presents the issue of conservation of heritage structures using structural health monitoring tools. It explores the optimum employment of sensor networks that would render the most optimum structural health monitoring system. This book attempts to present such advanced concepts and/or technologies as the new direction of structural health monitoring. This chapter briefly presents several advanced observations and/or applications that are considered to augment structural health monitoring techniques currently in

Sustainable design is now considered an essential requirement for all engineering systems. Sustainability is introduced as a general feature that reflects a set of objectives that should be achieved within the designed system. A sustainable system is expected to be optimum, smart, reliable, and recyclable. Initially, sustainability was always related to recyclable materials that are used in constructing engineering systems. With the evolution of smart materials, the introduction of smart systems, and the innovation associated with the internet of things, sustainability should now

Structural health monitoring, which is designed to provide a mechanism for damage detection and preventive maintenance strategies, contributes to most of this set of objectives in order to attain sustainable engineering systems. Integrating structural health monitoring within engineering systems results in a smart, reliable,

extend to include a much wider set of objectives, as outlined above.

Structural Health Monitoring

## **Chapter 1**
