Lightweight structural health monitoring and safety evaluation: Review and case studies

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has proven effective in early damage detection and in facilitating structural condition assessment. Conventional SHM systems feature comprehensive sensing for large infrastructures, such as long-span bridges and high-rise buildings. However, the high cost of these systems limits their feasibility for small to medium-sized structures. Inspired by lightweight design principle from the automotive industry, lightweight monitoring offers a promising complementary approach to conventional SHM. This paper provides an overview of the concepts, techniques, methodologies, and applications of lightweight monitoring for SHM. For sensing devices, non-contact, wireless, and robotic sensing are explored for their potential to enable fast and convenient data acquisition. For monitoring scheme, the concept of targeted sensing is introduced as an alternative to comprehensive sensing, focusing on the monitoring of critical structural behaviors using purpose-built devices. Additionally, the development of cloud-edge-end collaborative framework enables optimized deployment of computing resources for SHM. With regard to data analysis, the paper examines methods for data preprocessing, data fusion, and structural evaluation, with particular emphasis on artificial intelligence-driven approaches that enable fast and automatic analysis. Finally, this paper offers insights into the future of lightweight monitoring in SHM. By organizing and clearly identifying SHM techniques suitable for lightweight monitoring practices, this review serves as a practical guide for advancing the adoption of lightweight SHM and provides a foundation for further innovation in this field.