The main goal of this short course is to introduce the concept of structural health monitoring (SHM) applied to bridges and special civil structures. Why bridges rather than just special structures? Because bridges are considered the main vulnerable civil structure in the last decades due to the number of structural failures observed around the world. Why SHM rather than SHM of bridges? Because most of the techniques and general procedures described are independent of the structure. Therefore, the techniques are first presented for general applications and then most of the examples are shown in the context of bridges. This manner, students can learn the general concept of SHM and apply it later on to almost any engineering structure.
