Dynamical Systems & Risk Laboratory

Dynamical Systems and Risk Laboratory is a leading laboratory of its kind in Ireland with its research leadership and interdisciplinary approach towards solving complex problems with applications in built infrastructure systems. Renewable Energy devices, their supporting platforms and foundations have added a new dimension to the individual and overall safety, performance and value of built infrastructure systems. On the other hand, traditional infrastructure sector (pipelines, bridges, roads, harbours, ports, waterways) is ageing with not enough resources to manage them. DSRL addresses several of the issues impacting the built infrastructure systems over their lifetime by bringing together more than a decade of expertise and experience in structural engineering (statics and dynamics), sensor systems, analytics, risk analyses and statistical/probabilistic modelling. This way, DSRL represents the fast-changing face of structural engineering at its boundaries with other disciplines. Led by Prof. Vikram Pakrashi, DSRL won the Engineering Laboratory of the Year at the Irish Laboratory Awards in 2017 and 2018. DSRL has trained more than 20 researchers in its ethos of combining practical innovation and fundamental scientific rigour and has addressed a wide range of commercial and social challenges (handling pipelines, fish farms, railways, bridges, pipelines, wind turbines, wave devices and aerospace applications for example) through sustained industrial funding for a range of applications. DSRL is active and interested in joining research consortia for relevant calls.

• Electrodynamic shaker with arbitrary actuation capability
• Multi-Point Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer for long-distance non-contact monitoring
• Displacement, velocity, acceleration and strain measurement sensors
• Data acquisition platforms for instrumentation and monitoring
• In-house algorithms for structural health monitoring, control, real-time monitoring, damage/anomaly detection, system identification and detection of features of interest in a system
• Mechanical and Electrical workshops
• Portal frame structural testing platform

Services currently offered include access to:

• Monitoring, analyses and assessment of dynamic and static responses
• Laboratory tests using electrodynamic shaker
• Scaled experimental modelling for preliminary assessment of ideas
• Non-contact Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry
• Full Mechanical Labs and Workshops
• Assessment of Risk and Reliability for built infrastructure
• Sensors, data acquisition platforms and instrumentation schemes
• Extensive in-house algorithms and analytics
• Novel measurement technology development
• Numerical-experimental analyses for system modelling, identification and digital twinning
• Risk and reliability analyses

We also engage with individual needs around built infrastructure systems.