Some recent advances of intelligent health monitoring systems for civil infrastructures in mainland China

The intelligent health monitoring systems more and more become an technique for ensuring the health and safety of civil infrastructures and also an important approach for research of the damage accumulation or even disaster evolving characteristics of civil infrastructures, and attracts prodigious research interests and active development interests of scientists and engineers since a great number of civil infrastructures are planning and building each year in mainland China. In this paper, some recent advances on research, development and implementation of intelligent health monitoring systems for civil infrastructures in mainland China, especially in Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), P.R.China. The main contents include smart sensors such as optical fiber Bragg grating (OFBG) and polivinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensors, fatigue life gauges, self-sensing mortar and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), wireless sensor networks and their implementation in practical infrastructures such as offshore platform structures, hydraulic engineering structures, large span bridges and large space structures. Finally, the relative research projects supported by the national foundation agencies of China are briefly introduced.