Inverse problems in structural engineering and construction materials

The desire to visualize physical processes, rather than interpret them from charts and line plots, is a natural tendency.  The ability to do such also removes layers of abstraction and affords a more straightforward interpretation. As civil engineers interested in monitoring and improving civil infrastructure and materials, we may therefore ask the following question: can we “see” inside structures and materials during damage, degradation, or simply during their normal service life?  The field of inverse problems offers an affirmative solution to this question by using distributed data to generate (tomographic) images of structural and material processes of interest.  In this presentation, we discuss inverse problems in structural engineering and construction materials and recent developments in, e.g., imaging damage and deleterious processes in concrete materials and structures.