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Proceedings of the International Conference on
Advances and New Challenges in Earthquake
Engineering Research, Hong Kong Volume
SMART STRUCTURES TECHNOLOGY
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
B.F. Spencer, Jr.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
205 North Matthews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA
ABSTRACT
The design, fabrication, and construction of smart structures is one of the ultimate challenges to engineering
researchers today. In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to research and development
of efficacious actuation devices for smart structures, with particular emphasis on alleviation of
wind and seismic response of buildings and bridges. Because of their mechanical simplicity, low power
requirements, and large force capacity, smart dampers provide one of the most promising new technologies
for protection of civil infrastructure. Additionally, recent research efforts for advancing smart
structures technology have centered around innovative sensors and sensor systems, as they form the
essence of intelligence for a smart structure. In particular, smart sensoring systems offer a new and radical
departure from the conventional approach to monitoring structures. This paper is divided into two
parts. The first part focuses on the review two smart damping approaches that have been proposed and
implemented in full-scale structures. The remainder of the paper then discusses recent advances in
smart sensing technology, as well as the challenges and opportunities offered.
INTRODUCTION
For more than two decades, researchers have investigated the possibility of using smart structures technology
to improve upon the performance of traditional approaches to reduce structural responses due to
dynamic loads (Soong 1990; Spencer and Sain 1997; Housner et al 1997; Soong and Spencer 2002).
The first full-scale application of smart structures technology to a building was accomplished by the
Kajima Corporation in 1989 (Kobori 1994). The Kyobashi Seiwa building, shown in Fig. 1, is an 11-
story (33.1 m) building with a total floor area of 423 m 2 . An active mass driver (AMD) system was
installed, consisting of two AMDs — the primary AMD is used for transverse motion and has a mass of
4 tons, while the secondary AMD has a mass of 1 ton and is employed to reduce torsional motion. The
role of the active system is to reduce building vibration under strong winds and moderate earthquake
excitations and consequently to increase the comfort of occupants of the building. Since that time,
active/hybrid structural control has been successfully applied in approximately 40 commercial buildings
and 15 bridges (during construction).