Structural Prognostics and Health Management in Power & Energy Systems

Book excerpt: The idea of preparing an Energies Special Issue on “Structural Prognostics and Health Management in Power & Energy Systems” is to compile information on the recent advances in structural prognostics and health management (SPHM). Continued improvements on SPHM have been made possible through advanced signature analysis, performance degradation assessment, as well as accurate modeling of failure mechanisms by introducing advanced mathematical approaches/tools. Through combining deterministic and probabilistic modeling techniques, research on SPHM can provide assurance for new structures at a design stage and ensure construction integrity at a fabrication phase. Specifically, power and energy system failures occur under multiple sources of uncertainty/variability resulting from load variations in usage, material properties, geometry variations within tolerances, and other uncontrolled variations. Thus, advanced methods and applications for theoretical, numerical, and experimental contributions that address these issues on SPHM are desired and expected, which attempt to prevent overdesign and unnecessary inspection and provide tools to enable a balance between safety and economy to be achieved. This Special Issue has attracted submissions from China, USA, Portugal, and Italy. A total of 26 submissions were received and 11 articles finally published.