Welcome to the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) laboratory in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California San Diego.

What is SHM? Generally speaking, SHM is the process of making an assessment, based on appropriate analyses of in-situ measured data, about the current ability of a structural component or system to perform its intended design function(s) successfully. Damage prognosis (DP) extends this process by considering how the SHM assessment, when combined with probabilistic future loading and failure mode models with relevant sources of uncertainty adequately quantified, may be used to forecast remaining useful life (RUL) or similar performance-level variables in a way that facilitates efficient life cycle management of the structure or system. A successful SHM/DP strategy may enable significant ownership cost reduction through maintenance optimization, performance maximization during operation, and unscheduled downtime minimization, and/or enable significant life safety advantage through catastrophic failure mitigation.

Our research group is primarily involved in developing novel SHM/DP solutions and SHM-enabling technologies (such as energy harvesting) for many “smart structures” applications (mechanical, aerospace, and civil). SHM/DP is a very multi-disciplinary field, as any SHM/DP strategy inevitably must include elements of data acquisition/sensing, data mining and feature extraction from acquired data, and statistical modeling and classification of features weighed by costs in a way that facilitates risk-informed decision-making. As such, SHM/DP research involves structural engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, statistical science, and even economics and policy.

Our very broad research portfolio is represented in more detail in the Project Archive. Moreover, through a unique partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory called the Engineering Institute, we have also created the country’s only specialized graduate degree program in SHM/DP and validated simulation.

Thanks very much for visiting our web site.

Professor Mike Todd, Director