Smart Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technique capable of automated and accurate structural health condition assessment is appealing since civil infrastructural resilience can be enhanced by reducing the uncertainty involved in the process of assessing the condition state of civil infrastructures and carrying out subsequent retrofit work. Over the last decade, deep learning has seen impressive success in traditional pattern recognition applications historically faced with long-time challenges, which motivates the current research in integrating the advancement of deep learning into SHM applications. This dissertation research aims to accomplish the overall goal of establishing a smart SHM technique based on deep learning algorithm, which will achieve automated structural health condition assessment and condition rating prediction for civil infrastructures.

A literate review on structural health condition assessment technologies commonly used for civil infrastructures was first conducted to identify the special need of the proposed method. Deep learning algorithms were also reviewed, with a focus on pattern recognition application, especially in the computer vision field in which deep learning algorithms have reported great success in traditionally challenging tasks. Subsequently, a technical procedure is established to incorporate a particular type of deep learning algorithm, termed Convolutional Neural Network which was found behind the many success seen in computer vision applications, into smart SHM technologies. The proposed method was first demonstrated and validated on an SHM application problem that uses image data for structural steel condition assessment. Further study was performed on time series data including vibration data and guided Lamb wave signals for two types of SHM applications - brace damage detection in concentrically braced frame structures or nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of thin plate structures. Additionally, discrete data (neither images nor time series data), such as the bridge condition rating data from National Bridge Inventory (NBI) data repository, was also investigated for the application of bridge condition forecasting. The study results indicated that the proposed method is very promising as a data-driven structural health condition assessment technique for civil infrastructures, based on research findings in the four distinct SHM case studies in this dissertation.