Citation: Altabey, W.A.; Noori, M. A
Dynamic Analysis of Smart and
Nanomaterials for New Approaches
to Structural Control and Health
Monitoring. Materials 2023, 16, 3567.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
ma16093567
Received: 5 April 2023
Accepted: 5 May 2023
Published: 6 May 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
materials
Editorial
A Dynamic Analysis of Smart and Nanomaterials for New
Approaches to Structural Control and Health Monitoring
Wael A. Altabey
1,2,
* and Mohammad Noori
3,4,
*
1
International Institute for Urban Systems Engineering (IIUSE), Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University,
Alexandria 21544, Egypt
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, California Polytechnic State University,
San Luis Obispo, CA 93405, USA
4
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
* Correspondence: wael.altabey@gmail.com (W.A.A.); mnoori@calpoly.edu (M.N.);
Tel.: +86-17368476644 (W.A.A.); +1-805-903-2411 (M.N.)
1. Introduction and Scope
During recent years, remarkable progress has been made in the development of new
materials. Advanced structured materials, including smart and nano materials, have
opened up new engineering possibilities because of their specific properties (chemical,
mechanical, and physical) that are not found in nature, and can be significantly changed by
a user in a controlled manner to make them appropriate for certain applications. Due to
their unique properties, smart and nano materials have been of interest in countless areas of
technical application, in various systems and structures, including intelligent and adaptive
sensing or actuation, as well as active control. An understanding of the relationships
between their structures and properties is of crucial importance for the practical utilization
of these materials.
Over the past several years, a series of approaches for progress in structural control
and healthy monitoring have left paramount impacts on our everyday lives. This has
shaped the framework of many engineering fields. Given the current state of quantitative
and principled methodologies, nowadays, it is possible to rapidly and consistently evaluate
the structural safety of mechanical systems, industrial machines, and modern concrete
buildings, etc., to test their capability for serving their intended purpose. However, un-
solved, problematic, and new challenges exist. Unmolded nonlinearities, ineffective sensor
placement, and the effects of confounding influences due to operational and environmental
variabilities still harm the effectiveness of the state of structural control and healthy moni-
toring systems. A typical integrating structural control and health monitoring system is
shown in Figure 1.
The aim of this Special Issue is to gain new, unique knowledge about the relationships
between the structures and physico-mechanical and chemical properties of new materials,
including finding ways to structure the control and development of new methods for struc-
tural healthy monitoring. Another goal is to gather the main contributions of academics
and practitioners in mechanical, aerospace, and civil engineering to provide a common
ground for improvements to these approaches to structural control and healthy monitoring,
by using the unique properties of smart and nano materials. Studies concerning sensor
technologies, vibration-based techniques, artificial-intelligence-based methods, and related
fields are all welcome, in both numerical and experimental form.
Materials 2023, 16, 3567. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16093567 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials