Automatized survey, construction, inspection, maintenance, restoration and reconstruction have become challenging activities conducted during the process of cultural heritage and civil infrastructure management, due to the revolutionary impact of mechatronics and information technology in the routine operations. The complete process, framed during the IMPACT project development, considers different aspects related to the interconnection between classical engineering and architectural problems with the emerging technologies related to Automation and Information Communication Technologies (ICT). The impact of new technologies on data acquisition for survey, inspection and monitoring is studied, evidencing how the use of robotized systems and sensor networks determines new sets of available data to be processed by digital tools to build advanced models. The core of the IMPACT project relates to the integration of different information, the so-called data fusion process, aiming to develop powerful numerical 3D models providing an exhaustive and realistic description of the examined facility during its service life. Structural health monitoring, involving the key aspects of structural identification, damage monitoring and mechanical performance assessment, takes advantage of both digital image processing for inspection and defect evaluation and a variety of response measurements based on the available sensing technologies. Data and models provide the basis to identify and describe defects and degradation especially in view of determining possible performance reduction in existing structures. All the acquired knowledge, opportunely managed, constitutes the input for automated or partially automated decision-making process useful in facilities and infrastructure management.
IMPACT is a research project dedicated to the integration of survey, monitoring and modelling of existing construction with the purpose of increasing the automation and the robustness in the structural performance evaluation. In this respect, a sequential procedure is proposed in the project in order to evaluate the impact of structural degradation in failure mechanisms in existing structure through the use of novel source of information coming from emerging technologies in survey and monitoring.
The project aims are searched beyond the current state-of-art of in the sector of damage identification and condition assessment of existing civil structures. In particular, it is expected to take advantage from different expertise of the researchers composing the Research Group in the field of structural modelling, identification and model updating, damage identification, inspection and monitoring. The research aspects related to the balance between analytical approaches, for selected representative reduced-order models, and numerical procedure for complex systems are considered in view of the potential combined use of data coming from automated survey and monitoring conducted by non-destructive contact and non-contact measurements. The use of emerging technologies in image processing, non-contact continuous measurement of flexural shapes, large use of distributed wired and wireless sensors to acquire relative displacements, inclinations and accelerations under environmental condition and during seismic events contributes to enrich the validation process of suitable structural modelling up to their own definition. Simple and complex models are discussed on the basis of the monitored/measured real behaviour of structures.
The acquisition of images in automated manner (UAV, drones, robots, etc) or eventually a laser scanner of the observed structure permits to construct 3D point clouds from which a geometrical model of surfaces can be created. Such geometrical reconstruction is used as basis for the development of a BIM model of the construction in which the information needed for the description of the mechanical behaviour are described by a Finite Element Model (FEM). This first step of the procedure is completed by the acquisition of acceleration measurements acquired by the deployed WSN which are used to identify the main modal characteristics of the observed structure, usable for the updating of FEM. The process will be pursued for a selected number of case study and it will constitute an added value for the proposers and for the young researcher participating to the research activities especially in view of the growing interest of sustainable management of existing facilities.
After this initial process, the design of a permanent structural monitoring system can be pursued and automatic or semi-automatic evaluation of the structure condition based on damage detection can be implemented. The development of integrated procedure for damage detection based on data fusion, for example, on processing of images and accelerations, permits to make a significant step beyond the current procedures used in the field of the evaluation of the structural conditions. The increased and differentiated available information will determine the definition of new approaches in the area of damage identification, which push to real and simple prototypes with possible outcomes of the proposal research in specific patents for peculiar cases.
Finally, the proposed research aims to explore the indirect impact of the use of automation and mechatronics in civil engineering on structural performance evaluation. From this standpoint, the potentiality of automated integrated procedure from data acquisition to structural analysis are far from being fully exploited, as it is proved by the large on-going research in this area. Integrating knowledge from the disciplines of modelling and experimental measurements in a unique procedure may have a direct impact on the structural reliability evaluation especially in reducing the scatter in the involved quantities.