Course aim
Students will become familiar with the principles and practices of structural health monitoring and smart structural systems; they will be able to design decentralized systems to be applied for continuous (remote) monitoring of civil infrastructure. In addition, the students will learn to design and to implement intelligent sensor systems using state-of-the-art data analysis techniques, modern software design concepts and embedded computing methodologies.
Course content
In this course, principles of structural health monitoring are taught, focusing on modern concepts of data acquisition, data storage, and data analysis. Also, fundamentals of intelligent sensors and embedded computing will be illuminated. Autonomous software and decentralized data processing are further crucial parts of the course. Furthermore, measuring principles, data acquisition systems, data management and data analysis algorithms are discussed. Besides the theoretical background, numerous practical examples are shown to demonstrate how structural health monitoring can advantageously be used for assessing the condition of structural systems and, in further steps, for lifetime prediction and life-cycle management of civil engineering structures or structural parts. In addition to the lectures, a project work is included in this course. In small groups, the students design structural health monitoring systems that integrate a number of “intelligent” sensors to be implemented by the students. The structural health monitoring systems will be mounted on real-world structures, such as bridges or towers, for validation purposes. The outcome of every group is to be documented in a paper. The written papers and oral examinations form the final grades. This course is held in English. Limited enrollment. Prerequisites for this course: Object-oriented modeling and Java programming language. Requirements for examination: (i) Development of a wireless SHM system, (ii) participation in the project work (including the laboratory test), (iii) written paper.
Further information
This course is offered within the degree program "civil engineering". It will be held in the winter term and is "optional required" (6 CP). Further information can be found here.
Course material
All course material is available from the course website in the e-learning platform.
Impressions from the 2013-2014 course