Outdoor space self-calibrating thermoelasticity-based fatigue damage identification

Bridge and civil infrastructures maintenance, inspection, and monitoring are essential to economics and public safety. Thousand kilometres of road bridges over 100 metres in length in the Trans-European Transport Network.

Many of the bridges were built during the 1950s and are now nearing the end of their useful life, as recent tragical events showed.

Over the last twenty years, a large amount of research has been funded by European Research Framework Programmes for investigating materials, components, and software tools. However, in Horizon 2023 FP the focus has been already pointed to visual inspection techniques.

With this perspective, ARTEMIDE points to create two fundamental methods to develop an innovative approach for the full-field identification of fatigue damage in outdoor-space structures, based on infrared imaging.

The first method consists of a self-calibration and motion compensation tool for image conditioning, while the second method allows thermal measurements to be performed consistently and reliably in outdoor environments. In this way, damage assessment can be performed more efficiently and effectively than is possible today.

The research will be developed at the University of Ljubljana, while three months are planned as secondment in DRI Investment Management Ltd., the largest consulting and engineering company in Slovenia.

In the long term, ARTEMIDE will be fundamental for reaching a relevant academic position in Europe, with an eye to industrial collaborations with economics and social impacts.