Ship Structural Health Monitoring Research at the Office of Naval Research

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has developed a program to advance the science and technology of ship structures, called the ONR Ship Structural Reliability Program. The program has the strategic long-term vision of the development of technologies suitable for cradle-to-grave lifecycle performance analysis and monitoring of ship structural systems, particularly aluminum structures. Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an important part of that program, and efforts are being made to improve SHM technology to make it useful for lifetime management of ship structures as well as to provide operational guidance to ships' force in order to minimize the possibility of incurring structural damage at sea.