Introduction of Structural Health Monitoring to Civil Engineering Education

This paper describes the development of a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Education Unit; its initial implementation and assessment at Louisiana State University (LSU) and the University of Louisiana- Lafayette (UL-Lafayette) during the 2016-17 Academic Year; and its subsequent re- implementation and assessment during the 2017-18 Academic Year at these institutions plus its initial implementation at four partner institutions Case Western Reserve University, Tuskegee University, University of North Florida and Virginia Tech. The SHM Education Unit encompasses the Fundamentals Education Subunit and the Applications Education Subunit. The Fundamentals Education Subunit consists of an introductory and four content online modules whereas the Applications Education Subunit consists of two content online modules, a SHM system design/evaluation module and a SHM instrumentation model demonstration. Using a pedagogical model developed during the project, the former Subunit is implemented in two classes of a structural analysis course whereas the latter Subunit is implemented in two classes of a reinforced concrete design course. The results of readiness tests and student assessments demonstrate the effectiveness of the content and the pedagogical model to engage students and teach SHM fundamentals and practices.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Corrosion Management System of Regional Reinforced Concrete (RC) Bridges

Civil infrastructure assets, including buildings, transportation networks, energy grids and networks, and water-sewer systems, are critical functional components of day-to-day life activity in a modern society. The durability and reliability of these civil infrastructures are largely affected by corrosion-induced structural deterioration. In addition to continual use and increasing traffic demands, natural environmental conditions set degradation due to corrosion damage as a critical condition to durable and reliable infrastructures. Therefore, in order to improve the durability of the bridge infrastructures affected by corrosion in the most efficient manor, we propose a procedure/methodology to manage integrity of corroding RC bridges which is resulted by corrosion assessment by assuming different initial RC systems (including control actions). Our approach involves corrosion characterization in laboratory scale RC samples, quantification of damage based on different corrosion conditions with different corrosion control technologies, and integration of proposed models of the environmental conditions effect on corrosion of RC. Finally, a methodology is included for assessing the component performance and reliability following the performance observed and characterized for different control actions. The corrosion assessment models include deterministic approach and localized probabilistic approach strategies in a system management tool for use by owner agencies in addressing vulnerable structures in aggressive environments. The proposed research consists of three technical tasks and implementations task. The final goal is to validate the methodology with the proposed tools for monitoring and modeling for the corrosion assessment