Ocean Cities Structural Integrity and Health Monitoring System

For obvious reasons, the structural integrity and health condition of ocean cities are important safety issues for viable human inhabitation. For large complex civil structural systems, structural health can be monitored by measuring its dynamic response to environmental or man-made loads acting on the system. The response can be continuously checked in relation to critical design levels. In the case that the structural response exceeds the design levels, the structural system should be immediately inspected for damage. However, structural systems can suffer damage from continual environmental degradation, even at low response amplitude levels. This damage can accumulate to such a stage that a failure may occur under a final loading which has an amplitude smaller than the critical design levels. If structural damage is not detected and corrected then it may progressively worsen and eventually cause catastrophic structural failure. Therefore, a methodology for monitoring structural integrity, in order to rapidly detect the occurrence and identify the location of damage, will be instrumental in assuring the safety of ocean cities. Such a concept for damage assessment is presented here based on measuring both structural response and environmental parameters which can be used to infer the exciting forces on the system. This concept is illustrated using simulation studies of a large suspension bridge being built in Hong Kong.