Integrating structural control, health monitoring, and energy harvesting for smart cities

Cities that are adopting innovative and technology-driven solutions to improve the city's efficiency are considered smart cities. With the increased attention on smart cities with self-driving vehicles, drones, and robots, designing smart infrastructure is only a natural extension. Smart infrastructures aim to self-diagnose, self-power, self-adapt, and self-heal during normal and extreme operating conditions. Structural vibration control (SVC) and structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies, in particular, are expected to play pivotal roles in the development of modern smart and resilient structures. SVC methodologies intend to provide supplemental damping and reduce the structural dynamic responses during normal and extreme events. SHM methodologies offer valuable information about the structure's condition that is useful for maintenance purposes and rapid damage detection in post-hazard events. The collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South, a beachfront condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, could have been known in advance with an embedded SHM technology. More recently, the integrated structural control and health monitoring (ISCHM) systems have shown promise in the development of smart cities of the future. The integrated architecture incorporates the control and health monitoring components as complementary technologies and simultaneously takes advantage of both technologies. This article provides a state-of-the-art review of ISCHM ideas and systems. It presents recent significant developments in structural control, SHM, and energy harvesting that are paving the way towards the advent of integrated ISCHM systems, including damage-tolerant control systems. This article also identifies future promising research areas for designing the next generation of autonomous ISCHM systems for smart cities.