Jose Antonio Lozano-Galant

• University of Castilla-La Mancha

Quality management during construction is critical to ensuring compliance with technical specifications and quality standards. Traditional practices often rely on manual, paper-based documentation, leading to inefficiencies, data fragmentation, and poor traceability. This study presents QualiSite, a novel digital workflow that integrates Building I...

The construction industry is increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance productivity and safety, with object detection in visual data serving as a vital tool. However, developing robust object detection models demands extensive, high-quality datasets, which are often difficult to generate and maintain in construction due to the d...

p>Building Information Modeling (BIM) enables the creation of digital twins for physical assets like buildings and infrastructures. To accurately represent the actual structural behavior, it is essential to calibrate these virtual models using real on-site measurements. This process is crucial as on-site damages can compromise key mechanical attrib...

p>This paper proposes a methodology for utilizing acoustic signals as a source of information and integrating them as supplementary data into the bridge structural health monitoring system after digital analysis. The approach leverages the advantages of non-contact monitoring and the low-cost characteristic of acoustic sensors to collect various ac...

p>In recent years, wood has gained recognition as a construction material due to technological advancements and environmental concerns. However, wood's organic nature presents several peculiarities, such as variability in physical and mechanical properties, anisotropy, and susceptibility to biotic and abiotic deterioration. To assess and ensure the...

The deterioration of historical heritage has underscored the need for precise documentation and accurate measurements in restoration and conservation efforts. Detailed documentation not only enhances understanding but also provides architects and engineers with the necessary tools to optimize these processes. However, limited funding has prompted r...

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is crucial for infrastructure safety and integrity. Arduino-based sensors are gaining popularity in low-cost SHM structures. Distributed fiber optic systems (DFOS), such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), are employed for accurate SHM despite their high costs, computational demands, and energy consumption. The...

Underground mines are considered one of the riskiest facilities for human activities due to numerous accidents and geotechnical failures recorded worldwide over the last century, which have resulted in unsafe labor conditions, poor health outcomes, injuries, and fatalities. One significant cause of these accidents is the inadequate or nonexistent c...

The rapid evolution of digital technologies has revolutionized the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, driving the wide-spread adoption of digital twins for structures. These virtual replicas, developed using Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology, incorporate extensive information databases, proving indispensable f...

The shear deflection effects are traditionally neglected in most structural system identification methods. Unfortunately, this assumption might lead to significant errors in some structures, like deep beams. Although some inverse analysis methods based on the stiffness matrix method, including shear deformation effects, have been presented in the l...

Estimating transmittance value is a decisive factor to calculate the rate of energy scape in buildings. Various methods are available to determine this parameter in the literature and practice. However, they have some inconveniences (such as the fact that they are traditionally based on a limited number of measurements and expensive instrumentation...

Shear deflection effects are traditionally neglected in most structural system identification methods. Unfortunately, this assumption might lead to significant errors in some structures, like deep beams. Although some inverse analysis methods based on the stiffness matrix method including shear deformation effects have been presented in the literat...

Nowadays, monitoring aspects related to sustainability and safety in mining activities worldwide are a priority, to mitigate socio-environmental impacts, promote efficient use of water, reduce carbon footprint, use renewable energies, reduce mine waste, and minimize the risks of accidents and fatalities. In this context, the implementation of senso...

Nodal rotations are produced by bending and shear effects and bending rotations can be easily calculated using Euler–Bernoulli’s stiffness matrix method. Nevertheless, shear rotations are traditionally neglected, as their effects are practically negligible in most structures. This assumption might lead to significant errors in the simulation of the...

Accurate characterization of the transmittance parameter (U-value) is decisive when assessing energy demand or energy consumption of buildings. The U-value of building envelopes is usually estimated using commercial devices. These commercial solutions present several drawbacks such as their high cost, the fact that they require contact sensors to m...

Globally, corrosion is the costliest cause of the deterioration of metallic and concrete structures, leading to significant financial losses and unexpected loss of life. Therefore, corrosion monitoring is vital to the assessment of structures’ residual performance and for the identification of pathologies in early stages for the predictive maintena...

Arduino-based accelerometers are receiving wide attention from researchers to make long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) feasible for structures with a low SHM budget. The current low-cost solutions found in the literature share some of the following drawbacks: (1) high noise density, (2) lack of wireless synchronization, (3) lack of automat...

Visual inspection for road damages demands significant human effort. Automating these inspections would reduce costs and errors. Using photogrammetry to generate 3D models of roads has become popular thanks to advances in cameras and image processing techniques. Using UAVs, these models depend on images' capturing parameters such as height, overlap...

Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are currently receiving a great deal of attention from the engineering sector and has a considerable number of different technologies for their application. Their high development is due to the ability of these systems to detect and characterise damage to the structure in the prevention phase, in addition...

In structures with reduced monitoring budgets, the high cost of commercial metering devices is always an obstacle for monitoring structural health. This might be an issue when temperatures must be measured for both structural and environmental reasons. To fill this gap, in this paper, a novel monitoring system is proposed for the accurate measureme...

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a source of growing applications in a number of industries both as an individual technology and as a complement to other technologies (such as Internet of Things (IoT)). RPA allows the automation of human activities on a computer, especially when these activities are repetitive and high in volume. RPA saves man-h...

Estimating transmittance value is a decisive factor to calculate the rate of energy scape in buildings. Various methods are available to determine this parameter in the literature and practice. However, they have some inconveniences (such as the fact that they are traditionally based on a limited number of measurements and expensive instrumentation...

Structural damage detection using inclinometers is getting wide attention from researchers. However, the high price of inclinometers limits this system to unique structures with a relatively high structural health monitoring (SHM) budget. This paper presents a novel low-cost inclinometer, the low-cost adaptable reliable angle-meter (LARA), which co...

Since the Structural Health Monitoring applications are getting significant attention from scientists and engineers, a new system has been introduced. This device is capable of acquiring vibrations with a sampling frequency of up to 85 Hz. In this paper, the effect of having several synchronized accelerometers on a rigid plate for improving the res...

Nowadays, accelerometers are used widely by civil engineers for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) purposes. The expensive cost of acquisition equipment and accelerometers have made the SHM applications unavailable for structures with relatively low budgets for their assessment.A new accelerometer has been proposed in this paper. This accelerometer...

Owing to the high energy consumption in the building sector, appraising the thermal performance of building envelopes is an increasing concern. Recently, a few in situ methodologies to diagnose the thermal parameters of buildings have been considered. However, because of their limitations such as low accuracy, limited number of measurements, and th...

The construction analysis of cable-stayed bridges plays a crucial role in the security of such structures because stresses and deflections attained during construction might exceed those in service. Although some commercial software are capable of simulating this, their main drawback is that they typically apply the stage superposition principle, o...

p>Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications are getting tremendous attention from engineers; However, the expensive sensors and equipment needed for extracting the structures' modal characteristics made SHM application only applicable to singular structures with a high budget for their health assessment. For applying the SHM systems to struct...

p>Nowadays, accelerometers are being used in various civil engineering applications. Their versatility made them desirable in many Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) application. A significant issue with their use is the fact that traditional commercial accelerometers are very expensive. Moreover, the low-cost solutions are not very accurate. To t...

p>Bridges can be considered one of the most critical infrastructures of any country. Subsequently, their health state assessment is of great importance. However, durable monitoring of bridges can be highly costly and time-consuming. In addition, the current Structural Health Monitoring applications are only applicable to individual structures with...

p>Structural Health Monitoring applications are receiving more and more attention nowadays. The epidemic problem with these evaluations is their high cost. For applying them to structures/ infrastructures with a low budget of SHM evaluations, low-cost sensors must be taken into account. However, low-cost accelerometers have higher noise density rat...

p>The compressed steel-rubber composite anti-collision device is a new type of self-floating device protect bridges from ship collision, which can significantly reduce the structural damage caused by ship collision. The use of compressed tires recycles the old tires and increases the elasticity of the device. Based on experimental analysis, the pap...

p>Ground motion is categorized into near fault zone and across fault zone where impulsive component is included. The impulsive component usually causes larger damage than that by far-fault ground motion. To build a Benchmark model platform for cable-stayed bridges across-fault region for comparative analysis, the paper proposes a way combining the...

In the field of bridge structural system identification (SSI), Bernoulli beam element models are often used to solve inverse problems. More rarely, Timoshenko beam element models can be calibrated. However, these models account for only the general shear effects, whereas other shear effects, such as shear lag, are not accounted for. However, as wid...

Deflections are commonly measured in the static structural system identification of structures. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the possibility of measuring rotations for structural system identification purposes, despite the many advantages of using inclinometers, such as a high resolution and being reference free. Although some work...

Featured Application This study aims to review the state of the art of visual programming algorithm applications in BIM infrastructure projects. Abstract The Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology improves architectural and infrastructure projects by digitizing their processes throughout their life cycle stages, such as design, constructi...

In the last years, more and more studies have highlighted the advantages of complementing traditional master classes with additional activities that improve students’ learning experience. This combination of teaching techniques is specially advised in the field of structural engineering, where intuition of the structural response it is of vital imp...

In the last years, more and more studies highlight the advantages of complementing traditional master classes with additional activities that improve students´ learning experience. This combination of teaching techniques is specially advised in the field of structural engineering, where intuition of the structural response it is of vital importance...

Emissions from transportation have a severe impact on the current climate crisis. Therefore, the estimation of these pollutants requires precise measurements that integrate both traffic and vehicle fleet information within a specific country or area. However, the current estimation tools continue using vehicle fleet standards based on recommendatio...

Technical communication is an extremely important soft skill for civil engineers at the workplace. Due to globalization trends this technical communication often should be performed in English. If we join the fact that undergraduate engineering programs in Spain have been taught exclusively in Spanish, with which in addition, in rare cases those pr...

One of the main issues for performing Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is the high cost of metering devices. In order to make it applicable to the conventional structures with low defined budgets, low-cost sensors have been widely utilized. In this paper, the characteristics of a low-cost circuit (MPU9250) with low power consumption for measuring...

To evaluate the safety of structures, choosing a proper maintains protocol to assess the performance/ workability of the structures in the future, Structural health monitoring (SHM) applications are required. The SHM application usually applies to unique structures with high budgets. For using them on structures with low-budgets low-cost sensors re...

This article presents the application of the problem-based learning (PBL) methodology for introducing the civil engineering task of bridge design and construction to high school students with a multidisciplinary approach. The materials (toy construction system) and methodology of the workshop are first presented. Then, three examples of arch typolo...

This article presents the application of the problem-based learning (PBL) methodology for introducing the civil engineering task of bridge design and construction to high-school students with a multidisciplinary approach. The materials (toy-construction system) and methodology of the workshop are first exposed. Then, three examples of arch typology...

The characteristics of civil structures inevitably suffer a certain level of damage during its lifetime and cheap, non-destructive and reliable methods to assess their correct performance are of high importance. Structural System Identification (SSI) using measured response is the way to fine why performance is not correct and identify where the pr...

Solving optimization problems using heuristic algorithms requires the selection of its parameters. Traditionally, these parameters are selected by a trial and error process that cannot guarantee the quality of the results obtained because not all the potential combinations of parameters are checked. To fill this gap, this paper proposes the applica...

Identification of the mode shapes through monitoring is one of the key problems in damage diagnosis based on modal parameters especially for damaged structures. In order to obtain mode shapes of damaged structures easily and accurately, the mass-stiffness combined perturbation (MSCP) method is proposed in this paper. To do so, the relationship betw...

This paper proposes a method for the finite element model updating using static load tests under the framework of observability analysis. Previous works included measurement errors in the coefficient matrix of the observability equations. This impeded the obtainment of accurate estimations. To deal with this issue, the proposed method relocates the...

Collecting the information of traffic load, especially heavy trucks, is crucial for bridge statistical analysis, safety evaluation, and maintenance strategies. This paper presents a traffic sensing methodology that combines a deep learning based computer vision technique with the influence line theory. Theoretical background and derivations are int...

p>The temporary supports erection method is the most common way of building cable-stayed bridges. In this technique the bridge deck is first built over a set of temporary and permanent supports. Then, during the tensioning process, the stays are successively placed and tensioned by the jacks and the deck is raised from the temporary supports. Sever...

The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is getting more and more popular since governments worldwide are increasing the demand of this methodology as a requirement in their projects. One of the most encouraging ways to promote the use of this methodology is based on the so-called BIM contests, where practitioners are challenged to build a v...

Engineering education is a mighty driver of society growth and is one of the most effective instruments for eradicating the poverty and essential task for improving economy and social facilities in each country. A good educational system in university that ensures learning for all students provides them with necessary skills for success in both aca...

Despite its importance in some structures, shear deformation is systematically neglected by most static structural system identification methods. This paper analyzes for the first time in the literature the effect of this deformation in the static inverse analysis of thin web bridges. This study is focused on the observability techniques. The most...

Construction of cable stayed bridges is very challenging. These structures are extremely redundant and the effect of tensioning one cable has the effect of changing the stresses of the already installed cables. In order to achieve a targeted service state at the end of the construction process careful calculations has to be done by the contractor i...

During the first step in the development of any structural system identification method, the method should be validated by noise-free measurements in the first place. Nevertheless, this assumption is far from reality as the measurements in these tests are always subjected to the errors of measurement devices. To fill this gap, this paper analyzes t...

p>Despite its importance in some structures, shear deformation is systematically neglected by most static structural system identification methods. To fill this gap, this paper analyzes, for the first time in the literature, the effect of the shear deformation in the inverse analysis of structures. This study is focused on a parametric structural s...

This paper describes a study of the Tempul Aqueduct, one of the first structures designed and built by Eduardo Torroja. At a time when computers did not exist, Torroja’s courage and innovation were outstanding. He was in no way constrained by a lack of theoretical knowledge, inadequate materials and the contemporary doubts about cable-stayed struct...

p>In structural system identification, measurement errors and simulation errors are closely related with the accuracy of the identification method. In this paper, the effects of these two types of errors on structural system identification by observability method(OM) are thorougly discussed. An example structure is analyzed step by step. For the ve...

p>The condition assessment of pedestrian bridges might be overlooked due to the small scale of these structures. A short list of accidents is provided to justify the necessity of condition assessment on pedestrian bridges. In this paper, the structural system identification by observability method is applied in two traditional arrangements of pedes...

p>The usual moderate dimensions of footbridges allow design architects (and sometimes engineers) to provide such structures with capricious forms. Under such circumstances, the analysis of the service state is usually very thorough, devoting to the study of the construction stages much less attention. However, it is very well known that the constru...

Resumen En la mayoría de vigas mixtas, la conexión entre el hormigón y el acero es imperfecta y, por tanto, aparece un mayor o menor deslizamiento relativo entre ambos materiales. Este deslizamiento afecta tanto a las deformaciones como a los esfuerzos de la viga. Para simular este fenómeno, en este trabajo se propone un nuevo modelo de elementos f...

Traditionally, Spanish schools of civil engineering provide their students a class on “Technical English” in order to develop their language skills. However, this class does not cover all the skills that the student would need in the labor market and mainly focuses in the reading and writing skills, and in a lower degree in the speaking and listeni...

Identifiability of parameters in structural system identification (SSI) is of primary importance in any SSI method. It depends on the number and the location of the measurements, which is linked with sensor configuration. In this paper, under the framework of SSI by observability method (OM), the number of necessary measurements to identify all par...

p>The rapid bloom of cable-stayed bridges has been propitiated by the development of erection techniques and improvements of construction materials. Nevertheless, the economic boom of the last decade has deflected attention from economic cost to iconic aesthetical appearance increasing significantly designer’s freedom. This structural freedom has e...

p>One of the most important causes of the rapid progress of cable-stayed bridges in recent decades is the development of the construction techniques that made their erection possible. Cantilever method and temporary support method are the most common procedures to build such bridges. The temporary support method is the fastest way of building cable...

During the process of structural system identification, errors are unavoidable. This paper analyzes the effects of measurement and simulation errors in structural system identification based on observability techniques. To illustrate the symbolic approach of this method a simply supported beam is analyzed step-by-step. This analysis provides, for t...

Most codes assume a rigid interaction between concrete and steel in composite beams. This assumption assumes that there is no relative slip at the interface of both materials and Navier’s hypothesis is fully applicable. Nevertheless, all shear connections are flexible to some extent and therefore, full interaction is rarely achieved in practice. Fo...

The observability techniques have been proposed to deal with structural system identification under static loading tests. Up to now, this method has only been analyzed from a symbolical point of view. Despite the elegance of this approach, this mathematic analysis is far from being applicable in actual structures. To fill this gap, this paper prese...

Despite of the growing number of built examples, the analysis of non-symmetrical cable-stayed bridges has not received considerable attention from the researchers. In feet, the effects of the main design parameters in the structural behavior of these bridges are not addressed in detail in the literature. To fill this gap, this paper studies the str...

We first show that monomial ratio equations are not only very common in Physics and Engineering, but the natural type of equations in many practical problems. More precisely, in the case of models involving scale variables if the used formulas are not of this type they are not physically valid. The consequence is that when estimating the model para...

Observability techniques enable the structural system identification of static structures from a symbolic approach. The main advantage of this method is its deep mathematical foundation that enables the definition of parametric equations for the estimates. Nevertheless, this symbolic approach is not enough for the application of this method on actu...