Sharon L. Wood

Robert L. Parker, Sr. Professor in Engineering and Chair, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin

Opportunities and Challenges for Infrastructure Monitoring
(click to view video)

Friday, March 23rd, 2012 – 4:10 pm

Location: Sinclair Lab Auditorium, Lehigh University, 7 Asa Drive, Bethlehem, PA

Sharon L. Wood, Robert L. Parker, Sr. Professor in Engineering and Chair, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin: Professor Wood's research and teaching interests are related to studying the behavior of reinforced concrete structures. She has also conducted diagnostic load tests on existing reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges, investigated the fatigue response of cable-stayed and prestressed concrete girder bridges, and used measured rainflow data to evaluate the remaining fatigue life of fracture-critical bridges. She also studied the use of composite materials to strengthen existing reinforced concrete bridges. She has developed a passive, wireless sensor platform to monitor the performance of civil infrastructure systems. Prototype sensors have been developed to detect the onset of corrosion in reinforced concrete structures. Professor Wood is a fellow of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and chaired its Technical Activities Committee between 2003 and 2006. She is also a member of the Structural Concrete Building Code Committee. She served on the ACI Board of Direction from 1997 through 2000 and as chair of the ACI Publications Committee from 1995 through 2002. In 1993 she received the Alfred Noble Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers for her paper “Seismic Response of R/C Frames with Setbacks.” She received the Arthur J. Boase Award from the Reinforced Concrete Research Council in 1998 in recognition of her research and teaching in the field of structural concrete, the Joe W. Kelly Award from the American Concrete Institute in 2002 “in recognition of her dedication to improving the seismic behavior and design of reinforced concrete structures through the education of students and engineers,” and the Henry L. Kennedy Award from the American Concrete Institute in 2006 “for outstanding technical and administrative contributions to the Institute, particularly as a member of ACI Committee 318, Chair of the ACI Publications Committee, and Chair of the Technical Activities Committee.” She served as the Distinguished Lecturer for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute in 2010.

Opportunities and Challenges for Infrastructure Monitoring: Technical advances over the past decade have led to the development of comprehensive, structuralhealth monitoring systems. Yet visual inspection is still used as the primary method for evaluating the condition of infrastructure systems in the US. Examples of using measured bridge response to augment visual inspections will be presented, along with the challenges of implementing these technologies.

The Fazlur R. Khan Distinguished Lecture Series has been initiated and organized by Dan M. Frangopol, the first holder of Lehigh's Fazlur Rahman Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture.