Development of Monitoring Technology for Steel and Composite Structures

Masanari TOMINAGA*1) ○ Sunaryo SUMITRO*2)

Takuji OKAMOTO*3) Yoshihito KATO*4)
*5)
Shoji KUROKAWA

ABSTRACT Nowadays, maintenance management of infrastructures (in which

mainly consist of steel structures and composite structures) and reduction of their life
cycle cost (LCC), become serious problems those have to be solved urgently. In this
paper, health monitoring based maintenance (HMBM) aimed to reduce structure’s
life cycle cost is proposed. Theoretical background of HMBM and contribution of
monitoring information in LCC reduction are reviewed. As the tools to collect the
structural information, the sensory theory, the sensory system and the effectiveness of
recorded information of new innovative sensory technologies, such as,
elasto-magnetic sensor (EM sensor) and peak sensor technologies are discussed.
Furthermore, Smart structure by utilizing TRIP steels is introduced as well.

Keywords: maintenance, LCC, health monitoring, HMBM, EM sensor, Peak sensor,

TRIP steel, smart material

1. Introduction contradiction to the ‘initial wish’ as

Along the years of civilization, human beings
have been creating numerous infrastructure
systems for residence, industrial, defense and other
various purposes. These heritages have been
accumulating as a huge inventory of structures now.
Most of those structures were made from harden
soil, drying brick, stone and/or wood which have
been utilized innovatively.
About one and a half centuries ago, such
construction materials have been enriched by steel
and concrete. The advantages of these two
materials as ‘easy form’ and ‘high strength’ have
grown up and speedup the construction of
infrastructures significantly. Even now, most of the
structures are built by steel and concrete. However,
maintenance-free materials, significant
deteriorations spread out everywhere. Especially in
the last decades, fatigue and corrosion of steel
structures and frost damage, alkaline silica
response (ASR), carbonation of concrete structures,
become serious issues. These phenomena occurred
in the time when the ‘true life’ of steel and
concrete have not been verified yet. Therefore, it
gives ‘critical feel’ to us since we wish their health
life at least to be 150 to 200 years.
If the deterioration propagates as the current
speed, in a near future, preservation of the
accumulated infrastructures’ inventory need a huge
amount of reinvestment and it will shake the
financial cores from the root.

*1)
Dr. Eng Kawasaki Steel Corporation Senior Adviser (2-18-10, Nishishiba, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama 236-0017)
*2)
Dr. Eng Keisoku Research Consultant R&D Chief Engineer (3-22-7, Minamioi, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0013)
*3)
Keisoku Research Consultant President (669-1, Fukuda, Higashi-ku, Hiroshima 732-0029)
*4)
Keisoku Research Consultant Senior Adviser (669-1, Fukuda, Higashi-ku, Hiroshima 732-0029)
*5)
Kisarazu National College of Technology Professor (2-11-1, Kiyomidai Higashi, Kisarazu 292-0041)
 Now, the only one choice of the possible solution
which can be expressed as: identify the current
degraded condition; stop the structural
deterioration process; choose a suitable
repair/retrofit strategy to a certain service level;
perform health monitoring systematically; and
reduce LCC. In order to achieve the above
objectives, this paper describes health monitoring
based maintenance (HMBM) focused in
fundamental technique to identify structural health
condition.
2. Current Status and Problems of
Maintenance of Infrastructures
The infrastructure of Japan was getting its
ripeness at the end of 20th century and it is
estimated that new construction investment will be
reducing while maintenance and reconstruction
costs of existing structures will be increasing
rapidly as shown in Figure 11).
Technologically, infrastructures those should be
maintained can be classified into 3 (three)
categories: (1) Infrastructures those were
constructed and accumulated during high economy
grow-up after 1950s. In this period, most of the
structures were built with the composite of steel
and concrete materials. For instances, the industrial,
transportation and city facilities which formed the
megalopolis ranging with the Pacific Ocean, the
Seto Inland Sea and Kitakyushu were constructed
in a huge quantities in the short period. Such
structures are now facing concrete degradation
such as salt injury, carbonation, ASR and steel
reinforcement corrosion problems; (2)
Infrastructures those were constructed since before
second world war, accumulated during long period.
As the problem examples of this group, Japan
Railways (JR) infrastructures are facing the fatigue
of steel bridges and the collapse of tunnel; and (3)
Infrastructures those were constructed after 1980s.
Highways and Shinkansen network are the
examples of this group. Those structures were
provided with sufficient maintenance systems and
telecommunication network installations for
accessing recorded structural information.
By considering maintenance management
problem based on the above mentioned structure
construction periods, it can be summarized as
follows:
1. As the consequence of the problem of the
first category, huge amount structures
should be rebuilt and reinvested in near
future urgently. Therefore, to avoid
financial collapse, it is necessary to grasp
their properties of deterioration to find and
perform a suitable repair and/or retrofit
strategy systematically.
2. There are others important problems are
being faced by the first and second
categories, such as, how will their
structures perform due to earthquake,
typhoon and other unanticipated loads;
how to extend their performance due to
service upgrading, e.g., transportation road
upgrading due to forecasted large-scale
container and route expansion.
The first step as the solution of the above problem
is to collect the maintenance information. However,
it is different from the third category, structural
healthy cart of the first and second categories were
missing from the beginning of construction.
Therefore, as the first step to maintain the
structures of the first and second categories,
identifying current structural condition and
performing database by conducting health
monitoring is an urgent need.
Real investment
Standard facilities
Investment amount (billion yen)
(imaginary stock)
Standard facilities
New Predicted investment
construction
investment
Reconstruction
cost
Maintenance
cost
Year
Figure 1. Prediction of future investment on
infrastructure (adopted from Ref 1)
3. Health Monitoring Based Maintenance
(HMBM)
3.1 Philosophy
Maintenance management of infrastructures has
been one of the particular concerns of the
engineering community and responsibility of the
citizens to deliver these heritages in a feasible
performance to the next generation. Most of the
structures were built by using construction
materials of steel and concrete which were not
‘maintenance free’ materials. Even the ‘true life’ of
those materials have not been verified yet, however,
by a suitable systematical maintenance effort, it
can be expected to have 150-200 years.
One of the efforts is the engineering
development of infrastructure life cycle
management as shown in Figure 22). The objectives
of this engineering are: (1) to manage the life cycle
of structures in the stages of plan, do, see, maintain,
and rebuild in a most reasonable way to provide
safety and healthy performance systematically; and
(2) to keep in a minimum level of lost due to
3.2 Theoretical Background
During the life of the structure, the expected
total cost CET was proposed by Frangopol5) that
can be expressed mathematically as follows.
C ET = CT + C PM + C INS + C REP + C F (1)
CT is the initial cost of the structure, CPM is the
expected cost of maintenance, CINS is the expected
cost of performing inspection, CREP is the cost of
repair, CF is the cost of failure. In this approach,
the cost of performing inspection and the cost of
repair are considered as cost of maintenance.
This conceptual framework of the proposed
reliability-based approach for life-cycle cost design
of degrading concrete structures could be modified
to accommodate various structural degradation
condition. Here, it is modified to express the LCC
based on the concept of HMBM as follows.
m n
LCC = CT + ∑ C MBM + ∑ C REP + C F (2)
i j
i =1 j =1

earthquake, typhoon and other unanticipated where CMBMi

is the monitoring based maintenance
loads3). HMBM is the basic technology to collect cost at i interval and CREPj is the repair cost at jth
th

maintenance information, forming a database
system to open to the public or citizens for making
decision on a suitable solution strategy to extend
structure’s life4). In practicing this concept, citizens
are not just as users but also as the owners of an
infrastructure.
interval. Figure 3 shows that the healthy degree
of an aging structure will reduce following a
standard degradation curve. Therefore, monitoring
based maintenance is necessary to extend its
structural life. It is assumed that during a structural
life cycle, there will be m intervals of monitoring
and n intervals of repair of the structure.

Standard
MAINTAIN degradation
curve
Unanticipated
Safety,Deterioration CT
Protection,Repair,Retrofit,Recycle
100
CMBM1 CMBM2 CREP1
Healthy Degree (%)

CMBM3
Infra Design,

PLAN
Evaluate,

SEE
Budget,
monitor, Investment

structure
assess, planning,
Open
information
Contract
Level of Service CF
Construction, Bidding, Betting, Ordering,
manufacturing, construction, quality
control, waste disposal

Standard Life T Extended Life tr

DO 0
Time (year)

Figure 2. LCC management of infrastructure Figure 3. LCC schematic description

 The challenge in using the proposed approach is (1) service life of the RC structure is 100 years; (2)
quantifying the uncertainties in the input variables. routine maintenance is scheduled once every two
The rate of degradation, quality of inspection years; (3) in the analyses, all inspection costs are
method, and cost of failure are often subjective and converted to the initial cost of the structure, it is
difficult to obtain, but their values have a great concluded that minimum LCC can be achieved in a
effect on the final result. With reliable input data, it certain quality of inspection technique.
offers the real potential for integrating economic The relationship of the expected inspection cost
and safety issues in structural design. and LCC in various η0.5 is shown in Figure 4.
This approach serves as an initial base on which η 0.5 is the damage intensity at which the
to develop improved life-cycle cost design models. non-destructive evaluation (NDE) method has a
These models have to address additional issues 50% probability of detection.
such as serviceability limit states, use of spatially
distributed random fields for describing the 3.3 Utilization
degradation process, use of Bayesian theory for By considering theoretical background of
estimating the probability of damage detection, use HMBM, efficient monitoring technique and related
of improved time-variant bridge reliability models, effective technologies in the areas of condition and
reliability updating of target reliability level and health assessment, deterioration science and
development of user costs. renewal engineering are carried out and can be
In Japan, this approach was also applied for summarized as listed in Table 1.
optimization of maintenance frequency and time
for RC structures6), and modeling and estimation Table 1. Task flow in HMBM
of future maintenance cost for quaywalls in
Japanese ports7). Task 1 Prepare data base of the
In our previous study8), by utilizing this approach Documentation structures
to evaluate the economic and safety of an existing Task 2 Utilize high performance sensor
RC structure with a non uniform interval Investigation to inspect, evaluate and assess
inspection strategy with the following and current safety and healthy
assumptions: Assessment condition of the structures
Task 3 - Utilize LCC management
4.0 Prediction - Predict future degradation
η0.5 = 0.30 and condition
3.0 Simulation - Analyze financing mechanism
η0.5 = 0.20 - Examine suitable extend life
LCC／CT

η0.5 = 0.05
2.0 strategy
η0.5 = 0.15η0.5 = 0.10 η0.5 = 0.01 Task 4 Open the identified current
1.0 Publication information of structures’ healthy
condition to public (it may be
0.0 accessed through internet)
0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06
Task 5 Reduce LCC by modifying
CINS／CT
LCC reduction design, revising design code and
developing new technology
Figure 4. Cost of HMBM and LCC and/or new construction method
relationship
4. Innovative Sensory Technology for HMBM
Structures normally behave elastically which are
designed to deform and reverse to their original
configuration. When a structure is loaded beyond
its normal limits, it behaves plastically and
becomes permanently deformed and weakened.
Often this damage is invisible, but as strains in the
structure increase and the structure edges closer to
structural failure9). Changes in girder strains, joint
rotations and crack growth are indicators for
evaluating structural integrity. By monitoring such
changes closely, it is possible to provide
quantitative clarity to assess its structural health.
New innovative monitoring technologies are
proposed to investigate local and global structural
degradation mechanisms. Related to HMBM
which has been discussed previously, it is
considered that an effective monitoring system
should be supported by high performance sensors
which fulfill ‘AtoE’ characteristics as follows10):
(A)ccuracy: sensor should have a reliable
accuracy; (B)enefit: commercial price of the sensor
should be reasonable; (C)ompact: sensor’s shape
should be small enough; (D)urability:
serviceability of the sensor should be durable and
long-lived; and (E)xpress: sensor should be easy to
operate and time consumed for measurement
should be close to real time measurement.
Furthermore, a real time monitoring system with
a digital network to acquire, process, store and
transmit the measured data is discussed. The
proposed real time monitoring system provides
valuable information for directing timely
maintenance relief to those areas of the structure
most in need of repair, so the following items can
be achieved: (1) Planned repair or replacement of
the structure before catastrophic collapse; (2)
Improved allocation of scarce maintenance funding
for the highest risk structure member; (3)
Determination of structural health after
catastrophic events, such as, earthquake, typhoon,
fire, explosions.
Here, developments of high performance
sensors together with a real time monitoring
system are provided and discussed.
4.1 Elasto-Magnetic Sensor (EM Sensor)
Stress sensor that can reliably monitor
true-stress in tendons and cables has been
developed11) (Figure 5). The elasto-magnetic
sensor is a novel new approach to monitor cable
forces in bridge cables and anchorages12). Figure 6
shows the application of EM technology in
monitoring the real stress of cables in a cable
stayed bridge. Based on the fact that the
permeability of ferromagnetic materials is a
function of magnetic history and applied field
(stress and temperature), permeability function is
characterized at a technical saturation
experimentally13). Besides fulfilling ‘AtoE’
characteristics, the sensor boasts a theoretically
unlimited service lifetime and can be applied to
any structure built with circular steel
reinforcements or cables and does not influence
structural integrity in any way.
Primary coil
Secondary coil
Thermo couple
do φs di
φs : cable diameter
di : sensor inner diameter
do : sensor outer diameter
Figure 5. EM sensor schematic structure
EM sensor
Stress and permeability relationship
Figure 6. Application of EM sensor in monitoring
true-stress of bridge cables
 4.2 Peak Sensor
Peak Sensor with a digital data acquisition
network has been developed14). As shown in Figure
7, one channel of the dual-output gauge measures
relative displacement with high precision and the
other channel measures peak displacement and
passively retains that value for later interrogation.
Therefore, with one of these gauges, the structure
after a critical event (such as earthquake or
typhoon) can be interrogated, and the maximum
distance of structure deformation during the event
can be determined. These sensors require no
electrical power except to read out the stored
peak-displacement values15). Figure 8 shows the
application of peak sensor on monitoring the peak
displacement of bridge pedestal damper.
shaft①
shaft②
Shaft① : for tension
Shaft② : for compression
Figure 7. Peak sensor schematic structure
Peak sensor
Peak displacement data
Figure 8. Application of peak sensor on monitoring
peak displacement of bridge pedestal
damper
4.3 Smart Structure of TRIP Steels
TRIP (TRansformation Induced Plasticity) steels
are high-strength, high-toughness materials
originally developed as replacement materials for
use in applications requiring high-strength,
low-alloy steels. TRIP steels gradually transform
on application of strain from austenite phase to
martensite phase. The parent austenite is
paramagnetic and displays no significant
ferromagnetic response. The product martensite is
ferromagnetic. The transition occurs gradually and
irreversibly as a function of applied strain thereby
producing a ferromagnetic indicator in the amount
of martensite formed that can be correlated with
the degree of straining.
Such self-sensing, self-diagnostic, and
self-actuating intelligent abilities of TRIP steels are
considered for application as structure
reinforcement element for earthquake resistant
structures as shown in Figure 916). The amount of
transformed martensite of TRIP steels due to
applied loading was indicated as the change in
electromagnetic induction using electromagnetic
induction coils previously inserted on the TRIP
reinforcement bars as shown in Figure 10.
Solar power
Data Smart
analysis material
module
Interrogator
Figure 9. Smart structure schematic
concept
 TRIP steel
Coil sensor
Figure 10. Coil sensor for smart structure
4.4 Network System
Multiple sensors are comprised by a complete
real time monitoring system with a digital network
to acquire, process and store the measured data. In
a periodical intervals, the network returns the data
to a central control room by cellular phone,
satellite, or conventional telephone circuit. From
there, the data is distributed confidentially via
intranet or internet, therefore, one whose secret
password can immediately asses the structure’s
condition from anywhere in the world without
actually visiting structure’s site as shown in Figure
11. Such real-time, quantitative information greatly
improves structural safety inspections and provides
valuable information for directing timely
maintenance relief to those areas of the structure
most in need of repair, so structural life of
structures can be extended.
Engaging this network system with high
performance EM real stress and peak displacement
sensory devices will be the most advanced,
efficient and effective monitoring technology to
ascertain structural health. The engineered
solutions which are based on these technologies,
offer the following benefits: (i) the systems do not
require continuous power supply which can be
expensive in remote locations; (ii) the systems
measure the most important variables, peak strain
and true stress; (iii) the systems allow data to be
transmitted confidentially over the internet to any
location around the world on a real-time basis

SMG034 Data Acquisition Solar

Module Power CELLULAR NETWORK
Supply

IPG 010

SMG032

Network Master Unit

Third party
sensors

Wireless KRC SECSY NET

EM 001

Figure 11. Proposed health monitoring system network

(modified from SMS system network)
5. Conclusion
The current status of maintenance condition on
infrastructure inventory is briefly reviewed and a
newly developed innovative HMBM is discussed.
As the concluding remarks it is summarized as
follows:
1. A systematic monitoring for investigation and
documentation of as-constructed structures,
local or global structural health condition is
needed to preserve the huge inventory of
infrastructures.
2. Efficient monitoring technique and related
effective technologies in the areas of condition
and health assessment may improve lifecycle
performance of infrastructures in which derive
to a LCC reduction.
3. Effective monitoring system is suggested to be
supported by high performance sensors those
fulfill ‘AtoE’ characteristics, i.e., (A)ccuracy,
(B)enefit, (C)ompact, (D)urability and
(E)xpress.
4. Real time monitoring system is needed to
perform a ‘warning system’ before
catastrophic collapse of structures.
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