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Proceedings of the International Conference on
Advances and New Challenges in Earthquake
Engineering Research, Hong Kong Volume
STRUCTURAL CONTROL AND HEALTH MONITORING
Chairperson: Jann N. Yang 1
Recorder: Peter C. Chang 2
Panelists: Hideo Fujitani 3 , Hui Li 4 , Billie F. Spencer, Jr. 5 , You-lin Xu 6 , Fuh-Gwo Yuan 7
INTRODUCTION
At the second part of the ICANCEER conference held m Hong Kong in 2002, a panel discussion was
held on structural control and health monitoring applications to earthquake engineering and its effect on
civil infrastructures. The fields of structural control and health monitoring have been progressing
rapidly. However, some research and technological bottlenecks have limited their growth. The
discussion panel looked into some of these roadblocks; identified the reasons that each research topic
should be studied, and specified reasons that research in these areas would be beneficial to the
engineering communities.
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION
The panel responded to questions from the audience regarding issues relevant to structural control and
structural health monitoring. The discussion started by focusing on the perceived bottlenecks in these
areas of research. The panel and the audience suggested research topics that could resolve some of these
problems. Existing technologies and their shortcomings were also discussed. Summaries of the general
discussion of the panel are given in the following.
Wireless Sensor Technologies
It was pointed out that current wireless sensor technologies are not truly wireless. They are typically
wired from the sensor to a transponder. The wireless link consists of the communication from the
transponder to the internet or data acquisition equipment. Such "wireless" setups eliminate some of the
complicated wiring that is in use today, but many of the problems associated with wired network cannot
be solved, including limited number of channels, expensive wiring, etc.
Professor, Dept. Civil and Enviro. Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
2 Professor, Dept. Civil and Enviro. Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
3 Chief Researcher, Building Research Institute (BRI), Tsukuba Science City, Japan.
"Professor, Dept. Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
5 Professor, Dept. Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA.
6 Professor, Dept. Civil & Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
7 Professor, Dept. Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, NC, USA.