Advanced Condition-based Monitoring Systems for Improved Asset Maintenance

Advanced Condition-based Monitoring Systems for Improved Asset Maintenance: The aim of the proposal is to test, compare and validate in the field the performance of a number of state of the art condition-based monitoring systems and to develop an intelligent data visualisation tool to improve structural asset maintenance, demonstrate a new business case for smart infrastructure and address environmental and societal pressure on infrastructure. These systems improve the resilience and longevity of infrastructure by providing asset condition data to inform maintenance decision-makers. This results in lower whole life costs, fewer disruptions to the public and freight transport networks and a significantly lower risk of catastrophic failure of infrastructure assets. The systems to be investigated will include ambient noise monitoring, ultrasonic monitoring, wireless displacement/vibration sensing, acoustic damage detection and LIDAR. A decision-making dashboard tool will be developed to take the gathered data and present this back to asset maintainers in a useful and visual manner providing information when asset maintenance interventions should be made. This will provide an intelligent link between the collected data and the asset maintenance process. The system will be evaluated based on the requirements of an asset owner advisory panel, with the aim of significantly improving the maintenance of future infrastructure assets.