A combined experimental and theoretical approach to the SHM of structures subjected to seismic loading

One of the most important issues in civil as in mechanical engineering is the detection of structural damages. During its whole service life, a civil structure as, in particular, a building, besides the exposure to operational and environmental forces, usually present, can be subjected to episodic seismic loadings (earthquakes). These events may have a deep impact on building safety and therefore a continuous monitoring of the structure health conditions becomes desirable or even necessary in many cases. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems provide a valuable knowledge of the dynamic behaviour of monitored structures, of their response to service and environmental loadings and of rise and distribution of the deterioration conditions. In such a background, the purpose of this work is to propose a novel combined experimental and numerical methodology to perform the SHM of civil structures lying in seismic hazard zones. A relatively low cost SHM prototypic system based on this approach has been developed. The data acquired by the system are provided to a finite element numerical model (FEM) to detect the appearing, rise and distribution of local damages and to estimate a global damage level.