Virtual laboratory for leveraging technology for bridges and constructed systems

The writers are exploring the development of an innovative and adaptive resource for highway bridge owners, managers, engineers as well as technicians from non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) industries and the public. The primary objective is an official Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) website offering guidance and training on how technology tools may be selected and applied with sufficient depth to generate reliable and actionable information. Currently a large number of technology tools in the realm of “information, communication, computing and data technology,” “software for modelling and analysis of multi-physics phenomena and civil engineering systems,” “sensing, imaging and non-destructive probing,” and, “uncertainty and risk analysis and decision-making” are available for off-the-shelf purchase or applications by consultants. However, there are very few institutions that offer an ability for an integrative leveraging of such tools and the resulting data in conjunction with engineering heuristics for meaningful, feasible and effective solutions to infrastructure performance problems. Users will be exposed to the challenges of designing field experiments, integrating, visualizing and interpreting data, information, simulation results as well as heuristic knowledge for identifying and understanding the root causes of condition defects and deterioration as well as performance shortcomings. Explanations will feature both case studies and computational simulation tools that employ multi-physics software to generate more interactive and in-depth visualizations than possible with field data alone. How various probes may offer information regarding invisible defects and deterioration will be shown along with training exercises for aspiring NDT and SHM engineers. Given that vibration analysis is a common approach to SHM, and that many NDT techniques leverage vibrations caused by different physics at multiple scales, this paper will focus especially on vibration analysis case studies that are being developed as content for the website.