Special Session on TRUSS in Ghent (IALCCE 2018)

TRUSS researchers participated at the Special Session SS-6 titled “TRUSS ITN – Reducing Uncertainty in Structural Safety”, which is the last network-wide event planned in the grant agreement of the project. The Special Session about TRUSS was held as part of the 6th  International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering in Ghent (Belgium) from 28th to 31st October 2018. TRUSS was featured in the ‘Hubert Van Eyck’ room of the International Convention Centre on Monday 29th October from 10:30 to 17:15. TRUSS research has an excellent fit to the Symposium organised by the International Association for Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE). All aspects of life-cycle assessment, design, maintenance, rehabilitation and monitoring of civil engineering systems are encompassed and international cooperation in the field of life-cycle civil engineering is promoted for the purpose of enhancing the welfare of society. IALCCE brought together more than 400 people to share all the very best work done in the field of life-cycle civil engineering and related topics including 390 technical papers, 8 Keynote Lectures and the Fazlur R. Khan Plenary Lecture, to stimulate and promote research into this field, and to bridge the gap between theory and practice. By participating at this event, ESRs had the chance of promoting their research and professional work, learn and discuss about the latest accomplishments, innovations and potential future directions with other university researchers, representatives from all sections of civil engineering, and engineers working with engineering companies, consultants, contractors and local authorities, with a common interest in life-cycle civil engineering.

Objective of TRUSS session: Buildings, energy and transport infrastructure are key elements for supporting society in their day to day activities. The infrastructure network is aging and deteriorating rapidly under an increasing demand in operational and environmental loads. For infrastructure to remain effective and structurally safe, a management strategy that guarantees proper maintenance and best use of the resources available is needed. However, this is a complex task due to uncertainties associated to the structural capacity and to the demand on a structure. Therefore, this Special Session reports on advances by TRUSS (Training in Reducing Uncertainty in Structural Safety) Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN (trussitn.eu) in developing reliable modelling, inspection, monitoring and testing systems that will contribute to more efficient infrastructure management. The individual projects in TRUSS are quite diverse. Nonetheless, the need to overcome uncertainty in material, load and structural performance represents a core thread that ties all projects together. The contents are divided in two sessions dealing with:

1. Buildings, wind turbine towers, nuclear structures, ships and ship unloaders, within TRUSS WP4, characterized by the aggressive environments that are subjected to (corrosive, radioactive, non-linear structural responses) or relatively high uncertainties regarding materials and modelling (Monday 29th October from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm chaired by Joan Ramon Casas and Ciaran McNally).
2. Road and rail transport infrastructure, within TRUSS WP5, characterized by the variable traffic load (Monday 29th October, from 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm chaired by Ciaran McNally and Arturo Gonzalez, and from 4:30 pm to 5:15 pm chaired by Arturo Gonzalez).

The following TRUSS papers were published in IALCCE proceedings and presented at the TRUSS Special Session:

• “Mechanical characterisation of braided BFRP rebars for internal concrete reinforcement” by S. Antonopoulou (ESR1) , C. McNally and Greg Byrne.  Download presentation.  Read more …
• “Use of post-installed screws in the compressive strenght assessment of in-situ concrete” by M.S.N. A. Sourav (ESR2), S. Al-Sabah and C. McNally. Download presentation.  Read more…

• “Impact of input variables on the seismic response of free-standing spent fuel racks” by A. Gonzalez Merino (ESR3), L. Costas and A. Gonzalez. Download presentation. Read more…
• “Surrogate infill criteria for operational fatigue reliability analysis” by R. Teixeira (ESR4), A. O’Connor and M. Nogal.  Download presentation. Read more…

• “Probabilistic decision basis and objectives for inspection planning and optimization” by G. Zou (ESR5), K. Banisoleiman and A. Gonzalez. Download presentation.  Read more…
• “Characterization of hoisting operations on the dynamic response of the lifting boom of a ship unloader” by G. Milana (ESR6), K. Banisoleiman and A. Gonzalez. Download presentation.  Read more…

• “Monitoring crack movement on a masonry type abutment using optical camera system – a case study” by F. Huseynov (ESR7), E.J. OBrien, J.M.W. Brownjohn, K. Faulkner, Y. Xu  and D. Hester. Read more…
• “Outlier detection of point clouds generating from low-cost UAVs for bridge inspection” by S. Chen (ESR14), L.C. Truong-Hong, E. O’Keeffe, D.F. Laefer and E. Mangina. Download presentation.  Read more…
• “Using step-by-step Bayesian updating to better estimate the reinforcement loss due to corrosion in reinforced concrete structures” by F. Schoefs, B. Heitner (ESR8), T. Yalamas, G. Causse and E.J. OBrien.  Download presentation.  Read more…

• “Structural health monitoring of bridges: A Bayesian network approach” by M. Vagnoli (ESR9), R. Remenyte-Prescott and J. Andrews. Download presentation.  Read more…
• “Noninvasive empirical methods of damage identification of bridge structures using vibration data” by J. Moughty (ESR10) and J.R. Casas.  Read more…

• “Bridge condition evaluation using LDVs installed on vehicle” by D. Martinez Otero (ESR12), A. Malekjafarian and E.J. OBrien.   Download presentation.  Read more…
• “On the bonding performance of Distributed Optical Fiber Sensors (DOFS) in structural concrete” by A. Barrias (ESR11), J.R. Casas and S. Villalba.  Download presentation.   Read more…
• “A machine learning approach for the estimation of fuel consumption related to road pavement rolling resistance for large fleets of trucks” by F. Perrotta (ESR13), T. Parry, L.C. Neves and M. Mesgarpour. Download presentation.  Read more…

Each presentation was allocated 12 minutes with an additional 3 minutes for discussion. The Special Session about TRUSS was attended by approximately 40 people that included Sofia Antonopoulou (ESR1), Shah Nur Sourav (ESR2), Alberto Gonzalez Merino (ESR3), Rui Teixeira (ESR4), Giulia Milana (ESR6), Barbara Heitner (ESR8), Antonio Barrias (ESR11), Daniel Martinez Otero (ESR12) and Siyuan Chen (ESR14), Luis Costas from Equipos Nucleares (ESR3 supervisor), Joan Ramon Casas from University Politecnica Catalunya (ESR10 and ESR11 supervisor), and Ciaran McNally (ESR1 and ESR2 supervisor) and Arturo Gonzalez (project coordinator) from University College Dublin. Some researchers were unable to make the trip due to canceled flights as a result of a ground handling strike action at Brussels airport.