Health Monitoring and Reliability of Adaptive Heterogeneous Structures

New adaptive structural systems comprised of optimal material combinations, innovative sensors and actuators, and control subsystems need to be developed and tailored for damage tolerant applications associated with severe loading conditions and harsh environments. In this position paper, fundamental considerations related to the modeling, design, and performance prediction of adaptive heterogeneous structures and benchmark laboratory experiments that would be needed for developing new and reliable sensor-integrated adaptive structures are discussed. Recent progress in these areas is discussed and new research directions that are needed and the barriers to be overcome to fulfill these objectives are proposed. One major challenge is to optimally integrate a variety of sensors and actuators in the context of health monitoring in order to enhance structural performance and reliability. The other major challenge is of scaling material and structural behavior from the micro-and meso-levels to the macro-level for full-scale adaptive structural system performance.