RESEARCH CENTRE FOR STRUCTURAL SAFETY AND RESILIENCE

Civil structural and infrastructure assets, such as buildings, houses, bridges, dams, pipelines, power plants, tunnels, transmission towers, etc., are the basic foundation for the existence, development and growth of any society. Our society (i.e., Québec and Canada) is in vital need for developing innovative means for the design, rehabilitation, and health monitoring of its civil infrastructure. In this context, the aim of the CSSR is to promote and initiate innovative research towards achieving high safety on structures against deterioration (e.g. freeze-thaw), natural (e.g., earthquakes, blasts, fires) and man-made hazards (e.g., terrorist attacks).

CSSR team members lead interdisciplinary research in the areas of innovative structural systems, cost-efficient rehabilitation strategies, controls and smart sensing for health monitoring of structure and infrastructures. Training of highly qualified personnel, such as graduate and undergraduate research students as well as technicians, is a core component of the researchers' activities. Teaming up with other professors in the BCEE department and the GCS-ENCS faculty, the CSSR significantly increases the potential for attracting high calibre HQP along with external funding opportunities and outreach activities in the areas of sustainable structures, infrastructure renewal and safety.

Innovative structures, rehabilitation, monitoring and control is a multi-hundred billion industry that is in urgent need for technology transfer from academia. The team members build on their strong research relationship and ties with industrial partners. 

The mission and long-term objective of CSSR is to foster world-class excellence in research, training and technology transfer activities to enhance the structures safety. The emphasis is on the research and development of cost-effective structural systems, rehabilitation, monitoring and control strategies. The strategic research activities address a timely need at both provincial and national levels, in addition to its international leadership, in pressing problems such as: effective design, structural response to extreme loading, infrastructure deterioration, and sustainability. The following schematic diagram shows the interaction of the three themes of CSSR: Innovative Structures, Rehabilitation, and Monitoring for safety of our community.

The current objectives of the CSSR are to lead research in the areas of:

• Development of innovative steel and reinforced concrete building structures.
• Development of cost-efficient and robust rehabilitation methodologies for concrete and steel bridge systems.
• Enhanced performance of structures subjected to extreme loading events due to earthquakes, strong winds, and progressive collapse.
• Infrastructure Inspection Destructive and Non-destructive Technologies and Techniques.
• Design and integration of decision support systems for managing deteriorated civil infrastructure in an effective and efficient way.
• Monitoring and Control / Data Management of Structures.
• Development of efficient and accurate analysis and optimization tools for structures.