The importance of SHM systems in public safety cannot be stressed enough. A myriad of SHM systems are currently being employed, worldwide, to monitor everything from the strength of structural components in the world’s tallest skyscrapers, longest bridges and tunnels, to micro-fractures in oil pipelines and temperature related performance changes in tarmac materials. The information provided by an SHM system in invaluable for safety in that it allows for the early detection of structural damage and an informed, rapid repair response. Thus, SHM systems can be invaluable in their ability to prevent life threatening and catastrophic disasters by prevention, early detection and repair.

Bridge Monitoring: Safety and health of bridges is one of the most common applications for SHM. SHM networks can be skillfully applied to all bridge types in order to extract the most useful information. Common bridge types include: beam, truss, cantilever, arch, suspension, fixed, movable and viaducts.

Building Monitoring: Buildings with extreme architectural design, such as skyscrapers, are particularly vulnerable to damage from common daily, and catastrophic, forces. SHM monitoring and, model testing systems, allow civil engineers to gain insight into a buildings structural response to a wide variety of stresses. In this way, designs can be modified and refined as needed. Common skyscraper construction models include, steel frame and tubular; with trussed cross bracing, bundled and concrete.

Tunnel Monitoring: SHM systems can provide early failure warning for all tunnel types, allowing minor preventative repairs before catastrophic failures occur. There are three basic types of tunnel construction in common use: Cut and cover tunnels (constructed in a shallow trench and then covered over), bored tunnels (constructed in situ, without removing the ground above) and immersed tube tunnels (sunk into a body of water).

Dam Monitoring: In addition to the dam structure itself, SHM can monitor: permeability of the surrounding rock or soil for the determination of earthquake, landslide and slope stability; as well as water table and peak flood flows. The major dam types include arch gravity, barrage, embankment (rock, concrete, earth fill) and cofferdam.

Wind Turbine Monitoring: SHM allows for remote management of individual wind turbines as well as the collective management of the entire wind turbine farm.

Earthquake Monitoring: SHM allows real-time monitoring of structures located in seismic zones. Data can be used to improve the understanding of, and create predictive modeling for, a structures response to an earthquake. SHM data may also help to aid in post-earthquake response and recovery.

Composite Materials: Composite materials are widely applied in many engineering applications, due to their unique physical properties such as: high strength-to-weight ratio, increased resistance to fatigue and low thermal expansion. Although invaluable for construction, it is often difficult to detect damage within a composite material due to the complexity of its response to loads and forces.
Therefore, creating novel SHM approaches for monitoring composites is crucial for building safe composite structures. Examples of composite materials include, fiberglass embedded high performance concrete and ceramic embedded soft metals. In addition, “smart materials” have been created that actually build the SHM sensors directly into the composite material.