Engineering of Existing Structures: The Need and Place for Non-destructive Evaluation

Structural engineers today are still educated mainly to design new structures. This ignores the fact that structures already exist and need to be maintained. Students are thus often ill-equipped to deal with maintenance and preservation of existing structures. As an example, when a structural analysis model of an existing structure such as a bridge is built to predict its behavior, it is often done without considering the actual behavior or properties - this would require the engineer to have skills and knowledge in the evaluation of existing structures. As a result, these models are often inaccurate, which can lead to unnecessary replacements of structures. This is not only costly but it also significantly impacts the environment. In this paper we argue that new educational programs that specifically address this need should be developed that revolve around the idea of “engineering of existing structures”. Such programs would still include certain traditional structural engineering courses but also discuss structural behavior and materials properties, and how these can be determined by means of non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM), in sum referred to as non-destructive evaluation (NDE). Because these tools are not traditionally included in the structural engineering curriculum, a new set of basic interdisciplinary skills from the domains of mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as computer science (data analysis, signal processing, etc.), need to be acquired by the students. This paper makes a case for the need of this new direction, proposes curriculum adjustments, and gives practical course examples.