| Today the field of civil engineering is undergoing a shift of focus. Spurred on by rising construction costs and a population that is unwilling to invest the large amounts of capital needed to replace the now aged infrastructure that society functions on, the civil engineering research community has turned to investigating new ways to repair and reinforce existing structures so as to create new structures that will last longer and require fewer repairs. To this end new materials have been developed, new design practices pioneered, and innovative maintenance systems created. Groups like ISIS (Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures) Canada have been created to develop new materials, designs, and maintenance methods to prolong the life of the existing infrastructure and increase the durability of all new structures.; "Structural health monitoring" is a term used to describe to use of sensors, attached to a structure, that will provide information about the condition and behaviour of that structure. This is an area of study that has been pioneered in Canada by members of ISIS. The use of continuous structural health monitoring technology as a means of damage and deterioration detection is an issue that is receiving significant laboratory study, but it has only been within the last few years that field projects have made use of the new structural health monitoring technology. Through the Hall's Harbour Wharf Project it was hoped to show not only that GFRP reinforcement was functional and durable in a marine environment but also that real world continuous monitoring was feasible. This research focuses on the functionality and performance of a remote, fibre optic, structural monitoring system applied to an innovative wharf structure reinforced with GFRP rods.; An overview of structural health monitoring is given, as well as background and design details of the Hall's Harbour Wharf. The different types of sensors and equipment used are discussed as well as the methods that were used to recover and format the data acquired. The performance of all equipment and ancillary items are evaluated, and two methods for prediction of GFRP degradation level from strain data are presented. |
