Monitoring, Understanding and Assessment of Complex Structural Behaviour

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An ever increasing burden is being placed on Canada's economy and the environment by the need to build, repair and replace infrastructure. For the structural engineering community there is an opportunity to help alleviate this burden by reducing the use of materials and other resources through optimized approaches to design, construction, and assessment. Research has indicated that refined design could reduce the use of materials in structures by 30%, which would result in cost and CO2 emission reductions of a similar magnitude. These savings would be significant since steel and cement production accounts for approximately 50% of industrial CO2 emissions and the construction industry represents 6% of GDP ($73.8 billion). Similarly if construction timelines can be reduced, this would result in reduced energy use and lower costs. Finally, more accurate assessments of existing structures could also enable significant cost and CO2 savings by allowing existing structures to be kept in service longer. ***However, engineers are often limited in the design and analysis techniques they can use because of the need for conservatism in the absence of accurate information about structural behaviour. New sensor technologies such as distributed fibre optic sensors (FOS), wireless senor networks (WSN) and digital image correlation (DIC) could provide the critical information to fill this knowledge gap, and enable optimized design, construction, and assessment. This research program will contribute to groundbreaking advances in how new sensor technologies can be used to improve: (i) the design of two-way slabs, (ii) the construction of large buildings, and (iii) the assessment of bridge girders.***The research program will take advantage of the unique Canada Foundation for Innovation funded lab facilities and instrumentation technologies available to the applicant. The proposed research will advance the state of the art in structural engineering by: (a) using large-scale experiments and distributed sensor systems to understand complex structural systems, (b) developing approaches to modeling or assessing these systems so that material use, construction time and service life can be optimized, and (c) providing HQP with engineering skills that are highly desired in Canada and abroad.***The outcomes of the research will include guidance for how to optimize the design of two-way slabs, improved construction guidance for large buildings, and an improved understanding of the impact of variable load paths on the shear capacity of reinforced concrete beams that will lead to more accurate code approaches. Canada will see benefits from this research in terms of reduced infrastructure costs and environmental impact. Three MASc and three PhD students with specialty skills in the area of optimized structural design and core skills required of Professional Engineers will be trained.**