The section’s future research comprises areas of interest for both new and existing structures. The current strong research areas will be continued and further developed. Assessment of remaining structural lifetime is regarded of the highest potential for future research development and societal benefit within structural engineering. Aging infrastructure ties significant economic resources at national and international scale. Developing methods and strategies to identify and predict critical damage processes allows optimal allocation of resources for maintenance, repair and replacement of structures and buildings. The following research activities contribute to this field:
- Understanding of structural deterioration process (mechanical, chemical)
- Simulation, monitoring and assessment of time-varying response of structures to multihazard environments
- Multi-physics and multi-scale modelling
- Analysis and quantification of changing environmental boundary conditions
- Explicit and probabilistic modelling of deterioration processes (experimental, numerical, monitoring)
- Assessment of the present state, capacity and remaining lifetime of structures
- Decision and value of information analyses to identify efficient strategies for structural integrity management including monitoring, repair and different mechanical analysis levels
The embarkment in the research on assessment of remaining structural lifetime combines existing activities new projects specifically targeting issues connected to the assessment of structural integrity and deterioration, e.g. old balconies of residential buildings, offshore structures, concrete bridges and precast element joints.
In light of developments in digital technology, e.g. digital modelling, real-time creation of experimental data and monitoring, well established research procedures must be reviewed to handle huge amount of data and to ensure quality of research.