Dr Danny Smyl
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Lecturer
+44 114 222 5705
Full contact details
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering
Room F111d
Sir Frederick Mappin Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
- Profile
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My research aims to improve the techniques used to diagnose the health of our ageing infrastructure.
Dr Danny Smyl
Danny is originally from a small town in rural Kansas. He completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering at the University of Kansas.
He then served as a Combat Engineer officer in the US Marines, completing a tour of Afghanistan. After finishing active duty service, Danny completed a PhD in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University.
During this time, he received a Fulbright grant to study inverse problems in the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Eastern Finland. After completing his PhD, Danny was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland. He joined us in 2019.
Danny’s overarching research interests lie in inverse problems, structural health monitoring, material characterisation, structural engineering, and cement-based materials.
Danny’s interdisciplinary work will also feed into many other areas of research in the Department, such as geotechnics, optimisation, blast, concrete materials, and earthquake engineering.
For example, he will work with our Blast & Impact research group to quantify near-field blast events and the damage they cause. He will also work with our Geotechnical Engineering research group to quantify how water moves through soil and characterise subsurface structural features.
Danny’s methods of diagnosing abnormalities can also be applied to medical imaging, where he develops imaging regimes for biomedical processes, which can, for instance, help with cancer detection in human tissue.
Research Themes
- Research interests
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Danny’s overarching research interests lie in inverse problems, structural health monitoring, material characterisation, structural engineering, and cement-based materials.
In Danny’s approach to structural health monitoring, he incorporates tomographic techniques to detect, diagnose, visualise and quantify damage or flaws in a structure.
These techniques incorporate photographic, electrical or displacement data applied to a structure or element of a structure, and are then used to visualise the damage.
Detecting damage in structures is important as it can lead to weaknesses or failure. It can be caused by many things: earthquakes, subsidence, corrosion, impact or blast loading, for instance.
If a structure is somehow weakened by any of these, it’s important that we identify the damage that can’t be seen so it can be remedied.
Danny uses inverse problem solving techniques to work towards diagnosis. He starts by collecting data and then works through numerical modelling, in order to generate an image of the damage.
This inverse approach, starting with data and working towards causalities, is a unique approach to solving engineering problems, but is particularly useful when the parameters are uncertain.
The techniques currently being used to diagnose the health of our infrastructure are often rudimentary and done on a small scale. Danny aims to improve on these techniques and translate them to large existing infrastructure using our unique facilities at ICAIR.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Learning and correcting non-Gaussian model errors. Journal of Computational Physics, 432.
- Non-cooperative finite element games. Applied Numerical Mathematics, 167, 273-280.
- Shape-Driven EIT Reconstruction Using Fourier Representations. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 40(2), 481-490.
- Supershape Recovery from Electrical Impedance Tomography Data. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 70.
- An Efficient Quasi-Newton Method for Nonlinear Inverse Problems via Learned Singular Values. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 28, 748-752.
- Shape-Driven Difference Electrical Impedance Tomography. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 39(12), 3801-3812.
- Multiphase Conductivity Imaging With Electrical Impedance Tomography and B-Spline Level Set Method. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 69(12), 9634-9644.
- Prediction of blast loading in an internal environment using artificial neural networks. International Journal of Protective Structures. View this article in WRRO
- Electrical tomography for characterizing transport properties in cement-based materials: A review. Construction and Building Materials, 244. View this article in WRRO
- Self-filtering electrical area sensors emerging from deep learning. Measurement Science and Technology. View this article in WRRO
- Optimizing electrode positions in 2D electrical impedance tomography using deep learning. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement. View this article in WRRO
- B-spline level set method for shape reconstruction in electrical impedance tomography. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. View this article in WRRO
- Less is often more : applied inverse problems using hp-forward models. Journal of Computational Physics, 399. View this article in WRRO
- Invisibility and indistinguishability in structural damage tomography. Measurement Science and Technology. View this article in WRRO
- Damage tomography as a state estimation problem : crack detection using conductive area sensors. IEEE Sensors Letters. View this article in WRRO
- A multiscale modelling approach for estimating the effect of defects in unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites. Materials, 12(12). View this article in WRRO
- Nonstationary shape estimation in electrical impedance tomography using a parametric level-set-based extended Kalman filter approach. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation & Measurement. View this article in WRRO
- An overview of 38 least squares–based frameworks for structural damage
tomography. Structural Health Monitoring. View this article in WRRO
- B-spline based sharp feature preserving shape reconstruction approach for electrical impedance tomography.. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. View this article in WRRO
- OpenQSEI: A MATLAB package for quasi static elasticity imaging. SoftwareX, 9, 73-76. View this article in WRRO
- Stacked Elasticity Imaging Approach for Visualizing Defects in the Presence of Background Inhomogeneity. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 145(1), 06018006-06018006.
- A Parametric Level Set based Approach to Difference Imaging in Electrical Impedance Tomography. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 38(1), 145-155. View this article in WRRO
- Coupled digital image correlation and quasi-static elasticity imaging of inhomogeneous orthotropic composite structures. Inverse Problems, 34(12). View this article in WRRO
- An inverse method for optimizing elastic properties considering multiple loading conditions and displacement criteria. Journal of Mechanical Design, 140(11). View this article in WRRO
- Detection and reconstruction of complex structural cracking patterns with electrical imaging. NDT & E International, 99(Construct Build Mater 107 2016), 123-133. View this article in WRRO
- Recommendations and interpretations for the tortuosity and pore-connectivity parameter in undamaged cement-based materials. Journal of Sustainable Cement-Based Materials, 7(4), 239-247.
- Relating unsaturated electrical and hydraulic conductivity of cement-based materials. Australian Journal of Civil Engineering, 16(2), 129-142.
- Detection and localization of changes in two-dimensional temperature distributions by electrical resistance tomography. Smart Materials and Structures, 26(11), 115021-115021.
- Can the dual-permeability model be used to simulate unsaturated moisture flow in damaged mortar and concrete?. International Journal of Advances in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, 9(2), 54-66.
- Can Electrical Resistance Tomography be used for imaging unsaturated moisture flow in cement-based materials with discrete cracks?. Cement and Concrete Research, 91, 61-72. View this article in WRRO
- Quantitative electrical imaging of three-dimensional moisture flow in cement-based materials. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 103, 1348-1358. View this article in WRRO
- Modeling water absorption in concrete and mortar with distributed damage. Construction and Building Materials, 125, 438-449. View this article in WRRO
- Three-Dimensional Electrical Impedance Tomography to Monitor Unsaturated Moisture Ingress in Cement-Based Materials. Transport in Porous Media, 115(1), 101-124. View this article in WRRO
- A comparison of methods to evaluate mass transport in damaged mortar. Cement and Concrete Composites, 70, 119-129.
- Structural health and condition monitoring via electrical impedance tomography in self-sensing materials: a review. Smart Materials and Structures.
- Shape reconstruction using Boolean operations in electrical impedance tomography - TMI-2020-0236. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. View this article in WRRO
- Probabilistic Cracking Prediction via Deep Learned Electrical Tomography. Structural Health Monitoring.
Conference proceedings papers
- A Novel Two-dimensional Distributed Temperature Sensor Based on Electrical Resistance Tomography. Structural Health Monitoring 2017, 12 September 2017 - 14 September 2017.
- Learning and correcting non-Gaussian model errors. Journal of Computational Physics, 432.
- Research group
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Computational Mechanics & Design
Intelligent Infrastructure
Blast & Impact
- Potential PhD offerings
State Estimation For Monitoring Structures During Extreme Loading And Environmental Conditions
This thesis aims to develop state estimation algorithms for imaging structures subjected to extreme loading present in, e.g., earthquakes, blast/impact exposure, etc. In this effort, we will validate the algorithms using experimental data from structural testing and gain fundamental insights into the 3D progression of damage and other physical processes occurring in structures subject to extreme loading.
Tomographic Imaging Of Transport In Cement-based Materials
In this work, we advance the state-of-the-art in the use of tomography for characterising unsaturated/saturated moisture and ion transport in undamaged and damaged cement-based materials. In this effort, we aim to gain significant insights into the fundamental transport mechanisms of cement-based materials including, for example: dual-permeability flow, matrix-fracture moisture transmittance, salt ingress into discrete and distributed fractures, moisture movement in high-temperature environments, corrosion of reinforcement, and much more.