This LiveTalk has as speaker Luke J. Prendergast, University of Nottingham, UK.
Dr Luke J. Prendergast is Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at University of Nottingham, UK. He specialises in damage detection for civil engineering infrastructure, and offshore wind foundation engineering. Prior to this, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Dr Prendergast obtained his PhD at University College Dublin, Ireland (2015) and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from University College Cork, Ireland (2011). He also works as an Assistant Editor at the (Elsevier) Journal of Sound and Vibration (JSV), with focus on research related to damage identification in civil engineering structures. His current research interests include Structural Health Monitoring, Vibration-Based Bridge Scour Monitoring, Vehicle-Bridge Interaction, and Offshore Wind Foundation Engineering.
Bridge scour, namely the removal of soil from around foundations by hydraulic action, remains a significant threat to bridge infrastructure worldwide and is the main cause of failure of bridges over waterways. Bridges require frequent inspections for scour, which is time-consuming, labour-intensive, and expensive for infrastructure asset agencies. Many alternative approaches to manual diving inspections have been developed in recent years, with the primary focus on estimating scour hole depth. However, many of these instruments or techniques fail to detect or measure the distress experienced by a structure with a scoured foundation. Vibration-based condition monitoring is now a mature field whereby damage to structures can be detected and monitored by measuring the vibration response of structures. These responses can be directly measured using online sensors placed on the structure, or indirectly measured from other sources, such as from passing vehicles. This lecture reviews recent developments in the field of vibration-based health monitoring applied to detecting and monitoring scour erosion around bridges.
