Assessing the value of structural health monitoring

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are designed for assisting owners and operators with information and forecasts concerning the fitness for purpose of structures and building systems. The benefit associated with the implementation of SHM may in some cases be intuitively anticipated or proven by past experiences but in general there appears to be no rational or systematic approach for assessing the value of SHM systems a-priory to their implementation.

The present paper addresses the assessment of the value of SHM with basis in structural risk assessments and the Bayesian pre-posterior decision analysis. The quantification of the value of SHM builds upon the quantification of the value of information (VoI) or rather the benefit of monitoring. The suggested approach involves a probabilistic representation of the loads and environmental conditions acting on structures as well as their responses and performances over their life-cycle.

In addition, the quality of monitoring and the performance of possible remedial actions triggered by monitoring results are modeled probabilistically.The consequences accounted for, in principle include all consequences associated with the performance of the structure over its life-cycle as well as the costs associated with monitoring and possible remedial actions.

The suggested approach is illustrated through two case studies concerning the monitoring of welded details in steel structures subjected to fatigue loading. The case studies address the effect of the uncertainty associated with the performance of SHM on the value of SHM. Moreover, in order to illustrate the potential of the application of approach for monitoring of structural systems an optimal strategy for SHM is determined for a system comprised of three welded details. © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London.