IUCRC Phase I: Center for Innovations in Structural Integrity Assurance (CISIA)

Louisiana State University (LSU) and Louisiana Tech University (LA Tech) have established the Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Innovations in Structural Integrity Assurance (CISIA). Structural integrity and reliable life prediction of infrastructure and mechanical components have relevance in every public and private sector, including but not limited to energy, aerospace, construction, manufacturing and infrastructure.

CISIA will serve as a trusted source of transformative insights, predictive capabilities, and materials innovations across broad industrial sectors, focusing on structural integrity assurance for small and large structures and mechanical components. CISIA will conduct use-driven, fundamental, pre-competitive research to establish linkages between material properties and infrastructure performance in terms of its structural integrity.

The Center will elucidate and translate these links and their collective impact on reliability across all U.S. industrial sectors. The academic and industrial members of CISIA will work in concert to produce a diverse workforce of engineers who are trained in state-of-the-art facilities to utilize modern methods of structural health monitoring and analysis.

These engineers will become a highly qualified and productive workforce that enhances the global competitiveness and resilience of U.S. industries.

Structural health monitoring, diagnosis, and in-situ rehabilitation of aging civil and industrial infrastructure are critical for public safety and economic development. Understanding, controlling, and improving the mechanical integrity of near-surface regions of mechanical components subject to high-stress/high-cycle contact (interfacial solid-solid and solid-fluid conjunctions) are fundamental problems affecting U.S. manufacturing and defense industries.

The CISIA site at Louisiana Tech University will leverage its extensive infrastructure for research into installation, inspection, structural health assessment, and rehabilitation of underground utility systems as well as innovative non-destructive evaluation methods for above-ground civil infrastructure. The site includes facilities for the testing of metal, composite, and concrete structures including beams, slabs, and pipes both above and below the ground.

The site’s current research also includes the formulation of geopolymeric materials from fly ash and steel slag, which appear to have highly tunable structural and mechanical properties. By integrating validated diagnostics, machine learning, and data-driven decision making, CISIA will elucidate and translate the links between new materials, manufacturing processes, service histories, and their collective impact on reliability across all U.S. industrial sectors.

Establishing linkages between material properties, infrastructure performance, and structural integrity requires multi-disciplinary research collaborations. The members of this proposed IUCRC have the requisite multi-disciplinary expertise, history of collaboration, proximity to a broad and strategic national manufacturing corridor, and access to the necessary research infrastructure to produce scientific advances in the structural integrity field, accelerated by the proposed industrial partnership.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.