Development of innovative methods for performance-driven design and health monitoring of structures

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A large part of our infrastructure was built in mid seventies and they are in urgent need of rehabilitation and/or reconstruction. In order to mitigate the vulnerability of the existing and new structures to operational and extreme loads (e.g. earthquakes), efficient and accurate methods for design and assessment are needed. The long term goals of the proposed research program are to develop practical methods for performance-based design (PBD), rehabilitation, and monitoring of structures; and to contribute to the practice of structural engineering by aiding in the development of next generation codes, standards and design guidelines. The short term goals are identified as follows: (1) develop practical methods for performance-based seismic design (PBSD) and rehabilitation of buildings, (2) develop a PBD method for buildings in multi-hazard events, especially post-earthquake fires (PEF), and (3) develop structural health monitoring strategies for seismic performance monitoring and post-earthquake assessment of buildings. To achieve Goal 1, a direct displacement and damage-based method for building design will be developed. The proposed research will attempt to extend existing methods to develop a practical design method for buildings based on a direct estimation of the target displacement and damage. Then, it will be extended to develop a new method for performance-based rehabilitation of buildings using tuned mass dampers (TMDs) with semi-active control systems with magneto-rheological (MR) fluid dampers. To achieve Goal 2, the PBD methods developed above will be updated based on numerical and experimental studies on building frame/sub-frames subjected to lateral loads and high temperature to simulate post-earthquake fire. While there are some numerical studies available on buildings subjected to PEF hazard, there is no experimental study available in this area. The experimental part of the study will utilize controllable radiant heating panels to simulate the temperature in a standard fire. To achieve Goal 3, a hybrid model-based and data-driven method will be developed for rapid assessment of seismic performance and post-earthquake evaluation of buildings using structural health monitoring (SHM) data. The proposed method will combine the advantages of both model-based (requiring finite element model of the monitored structure) and data-driven (considering only data patterns and features). The proposed hybrid method will be developed and demonstrated using vibration data from an instrumented building. The proposed research program will be built upon the applicant’s ongoing work in the above areas. There is significant potential for innovation in the proposed research which aims at developing safe and sustainable civil infrastructure for the benefit of Canada, and train highly qualified personnel to contribute to the profession and the society at large.