Innovative Structural Health Monitoring and Risk Informed Structural Integrity Management

During their lifetime, offshore structures can be exposed to extreme weather conditions, which are associated with unusual big wave events. Such excessive loads may compromise the safety and integrity of those energy-related infrastructures and increase their susceptibility to structural failures. In this context, the deployment of a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system can safeguard both the structural integrity and the normal operational conditions of such structures. The benefits of deploying SHM systems to this kind of infrastructure triggered the conception and elaboration of an ambitious and promising R&D project, which is entitled “Innovative Structural Health Monitoring and Risk Informed Structural Integrity Management (InnoSHM)” and funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD). The InnoSHM project focuses on the development of Digital Twins as well as on the use of advanced System Identification Techniques, Big Data technology and Risk Management, aiming to support the development of a real-time SHM system and a data-driven decision support platform. It is expected that the InnoSHM will allow early-stage damage detection and, in turn, improve maintenance and integrity management of offshore structures. The ultimate goal of InnoSHM is to enable the operators of the offshore structures to know immediately after a hazardous event if anything critical has happened to the structures and, thereby, effectively and safely support critical decision-making processes. The execution of such a demanding project required the synergy between academia and industry. Hence, a consortium has been formed consisting of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Danish Offshore Technology Centre (DTU Offshore), Aalborg University (AAU) as well as TotalEnergies, Ramboll, and Brincker Monitoring ApS. The state-of-the-art techniques to be developed within the InnoSHM framework and the knowledge acquired can be readily applied to different types of structures, for which the digitalization of structural health management is a dominating trend.