Large-scale earthquakes pose serious threats to infrastructure causing substantial damage and large residual deformations. Superelastic (SE) Shape-Memory-Alloys (SMAs) are unique alloys with the ability to undergo large deformations, but can recover its original shape upon stress removal. The purpose of this research is to exploit this characteristic of SMAs such that concrete Beam-Column Joints (BCJs) reinforced with SMA bars at the plastic hinge region experience reduced residual deformation at the end of earthquakes. Another objective is to evaluate the seismic performance of SMA Reinforced Concrete BCJs repaired with flowable Structural-Repair-Concrete (SRC). A $\frac{3}{4}$-scale BCJ reinforced with SMA rebars in the plastic-hinge zone was tested under reversed cyclic loading, and subsequently repaired and retested. The joint was selected from an RC building located in the seismic region of western Canada. It was designed and detailed according to the NBCC 2005 and CSA A23.3-04 recommendations. The behaviour under reversed cyclic loading of the original and repaired joints, their load-storey drift, and energy dissipation ability were compared. The results demonstrate that SMA-RC BCJs are able to recover nearly all of their post-yield deformation, requiring a minimum amount of repair, even after a large earthquake, proving to be smart structural elements. It was also shown that the use of SRC to repair damaged BCJs can restore its full capacity.

To assess the performance of a structure requires the measurement of global and relative displacements at critical points across the structure. They should be obtained in real time and in all weather condition. A Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) could satisfy the last two requirements. The American Global Position System (GPS) provides long term acquisitions with sampling rates sufficient to track the displacement of long period structures. The accuracy is of the order of sub-centimetres. The steel building which hosts the authors' laboratory is the reference case-study within this paper. First a comparison of data collected by GPS sensor units with data recorded by tri-axial accelerometers is carried out when dynamic vibrations are induced in the structure by movements of the internal bridge-crane. The elaborations from the GPS position readings are then compared with the results obtained by a Finite Element (FE) numerical simulation. The purposes are: i) to realize a refinement of the structural parameters which characterize the building and ii) to outline a suitable way for processing GPS data toward structural monitoring.

Piezo-based active structural health monitoring (SHM) requires amplifiers specifically designed for capacitive loads. Moreover, with the increase in number of applications of wireless SHM systems, energy efficiency and cost reduction for this type of amplifiers is becoming a requirement. General lab grade amplifiers are big and costly, and not built for outdoor environments. Although some piezoceramic power amplifiers are available in the market, none of them are specifically targeting the wireless constraints and low power requirements. In this paper, a piezoceramic transducer amplifier for wireless active SHM systems has been designed. Power requirements are met by two digital On/Off switches that set the amplifier in a standby state when not in use. It provides a stable ${\pm}180$ Volts output with a bandwidth of 7k Hz using a single 12 V battery. Additionally, both voltage and current outputs are provided for feedback control, impedance check, or actuator damage verification. Vibration control tests of an aluminum beam were conducted in the University of Houston lab, while wireless active SHM tests of a wind turbine blade were performed in the Harbin Institute of Technology wind tunnel. The results showed that the developed amplifier provided equivalent results to commercial solutions in suppressing structural vibrations, and that it allows researchers to perform active wireless SHM on moving objects with no power wires from the grid.

This paper presents a multi-functional system, consisting of a magnetorheological (MR) damper and an electromagnetic induction (EMI) device, and its applications in stay cables. The proposed system is capable of offering multiple functions: (1) mitigating excessive vibrations of cables, (2) estimating cable tension, and (3) harvesting energy for wireless sensors used health monitoring of cable-stayed bridges. In the proposed system, the EMI device, consisting of permanent magnets and a solenoid coil, can converts vibration energy into electrical energy (i.e., induced emf); hence, it acts as an energy harvesting system. Moreover, the cable tension can be estimated by using the emf signals obtained from the EMI device. In addition, the MR damper, whose damping property is controlled by the harvested energy from the EMI device, can effectively reduce excessive cable vibrations. In this study, the multi-functionality of the proposed system is experimentally evaluated by conducting a shaking table test as well as a full-scale stay cable in a laboratory setting. In the shaking table experiment, the energy harvesting capability of the EMI device for wireless sensor nodes is investigated. The performance on the cable tension estimation and the vibration mitigation are evaluated using the full-scale cable test setup. The test results show that the proposed system can sufficiently generate and store the electricity for operating a wireless sensor node twice per day, significantly alleviate vibration of a stay cable (by providing about 20% larger damping compared to the passive optimal case), and estimate the cable tension accurately within a 2.5% error.

Hybrid acceleration-impedance sensor nodes on Imote2-platform are designed for damage monitoring in steel girder connections. Thus, the feasibility of the sensor nodes is examined about its performance for vibration-based global monitoring and impedance-based local monitoring in the structural systems. To achieve the objective, the following approaches are implemented. First, a damage monitoring scheme is described in parallel with global vibration-based methods and local impedance-based methods. Second, multi-scale sensor nodes that enable combined acceleration-impedance monitoring are described on the design of hardware components and embedded software to operate. Third, the performances of the multi-scale sensor nodes are experimentally evaluated from damage monitoring in a lab-scaled steel girder with bolted connection joints.

The present paper is devoted to vibration canceling and shape control of piezoelastic slender beams. Taking into account the presence of electric networks, an extended electromechanically coupled Bernoulli-Euler beam theory for passive piezoelectric composite structures is shortly introduced in the first part of our contribution. The second part of the paper deals with the concept of passive shape control of beams using shaped piezoelectric layers and tuned inductive networks. It is shown that an impedance matching and a shaping condition must be fulfilled in order to perfectly cancel vibrations due to an arbitrary harmonic load for a specific frequency. As a main result of the present paper, the correctness of the theory of passive shape control is demonstrated for a harmonically excited piezoelelastic cantilever by a finite element calculation based on one-dimensional Bernoulli-Euler beam elements, as well as by the commercial finite element code of ANSYS using three-dimensional solid elements. Finally, an outlook for the practical importance of the passive shape control concept is given: It is shown that harmonic vibrations of a beam with properly shaped layers according to the presented passive shape control theory, which are attached to an resistor-inductive circuit (RL-circuit), can be significantly reduced over a large frequency range compared to a beam with uniformly distributed piezoelectric layers.