Special Issue on Field Testing of Bridges and Buildings

Understanding the behavior of structures subjected to complex environmental and mechanical loading is essential for their design, safety, and reliability. In many instances, behavioral understanding is developed using laboratory tests of structural components and systems that are at or close to full scale. As a result, a relatively recent trend in experimental structural engineering research has centered on building larger and more complex testing laboratories. Example facilities include those affiliated with the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) in the United States (NEES 2014) and E-Defense Shake Table in Japan (NIED 2014). Several successful research projects have been executed at these facilities, with results being published in special issues of the ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering (Vol. 139, Issues 7 and 8) and elsewhere (e.g., Lignos et al. 2011; Kawashima et al. 2012; Lowes et al. 2012). Despite offering several advantages, which can include better control of loads during testing and dense instrumentation, there are also limitations to experiments conducted in a laboratory setting. These limitations can include costs associated with completing tests, correct simulation of realistic loading, boundary and environmental conditions, adequate reproduction of size effects, and ensuring that material properties and construction techniques used in the lab are representative of actual properties, techniques, and age. As our infrastructure ages, the cost to maintain and replace it continues to rise. The ASCE’s 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure states that 24.9% of the nation’s bridges are either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, with the total price tag for repair or replacement estimated at $76 billion (ASCE 2013). Therefore, the need to better understand the performance and current health of actual structures in situ is becoming of paramount importance. As a result, structural health monitoring and structural field testing have emerged as important components of structural engineering and prominent research areas. Recent research efforts related to real-world applications of structural identification and health monitoring were documented in the October 2013 Special Issue of the ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering (Vol. 139, Issue 10). A similar effort related to documenting the state of the art on field testing and evaluation of large-scale, in situ structural components and systems has not been undertaken by the ASCE for some time. This special issue is intended to fill this knowledge gap by documenting research results on large-scale field testing of structures and contains manuscripts that focus on in situ destructive testing of decommissioned and large-amplitude forced testing of in-service bridges and buildings as well as monitoring under ambient vibration conditions or during construction. A total of 13 papers are included, 7 of which are related to bridges and 6 to buildings. Researchers and engineering practitioners from seven countries located on four continents contributed to this special issue. Brief summaries of the published manuscripts, in the order in which they are published, are provided in what follows.