A washer is a common structural element that is directly used along the loading path of a bolted connection. Pre-load on a bolted connection directly impacts its load bearing capacity and pre-load monitoring is an important aspect of structural health monitoring (SHM). With the change of the pre-load on a bolted connection, the loading force on the washer will change and, therefore, the outer diameter and outer circumferential length of the washer will change. Taking advantage of the high sensitivity and the small size of a Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor, we propose an innovative smart washer encircled by an FBG sensor that can directly measure the circumferential strain change and, therefore, the pre-load on the washer. For protection, the FBG is embedded in a pre-machined groove along the circumferential surface of the washer. A theoretical approach is used to derive the linear relationship between the applied load and the circumferential strain of the washer. To validate the functionality of the FBG-enabled smart sensor for in situ bolt pre-load monitoring, a simple but effective testing apparatus is designed and fabricated. The apparatus involves a bolt, the FBG-enabled washer, a metal plate, and a nut. The bolt has an embedded FBG along its axial direction for precise axial strain and, therefore, force measurement. With the calibrated axial force measuring bolt, in situ experiments on the FBG-enabled smart washers are conducted. Experimental results reveal the linear relationship between the pre-load and the wavelength of the FBG sensor encircling the washer. Both analytical and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed novel approach is sensitive to the bolt pre-load and can monitor in real time the bolt looseness in the entire loading range.
The traditional monitoring methods can only give warnings for the bolts with severe looseness. However, it is essential for the safety of bolted joints to detect the looseness of bolts at the very early stage. To this end, in this paper, coda wave interferometry (CWI)-based high-resolution bolt preload monitoring using a single piezoceramic transducer is proposed. According to the CWI and acoustoelastic theories, a theoretical model is established and the linear relationship between the time shifts of coda waves and the preload variations of the bolt is derived. An experiment, in which a piezoceramic transducer simultaneously functions as the actuator and sensor, was carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Three lead zirconium titanate transducers at different locations of a bolted specimen are tested. The experimental results show that the time shifts of coda waves increase linearly with the decrease of bolt preload and the detectable resolution of bolt preload (DRBP) is up to 0.326%. The DRBP value proves that the proposed technique can successfully monitor bolt looseness at the very early stage. In addition, a comparison study is carried out between the CWI-based method and the energy-based wavelet packet decomposition (WPD) method, and the result shows that the preload sensitivity of the CWI-based method is about six times higher than that of the WPD approach. Therefore, the CWI-based method is an effective way for the in situ monitoring of bolt looseness, especially in the embryonic stage.
This paper proposes a new concept, named the Detectable Resolution of Bolt Pre-load (DRBP), by using the coda wave interferometry (CWI) to quantitatively measure the pre-load looseness at a high resolution. Due to its characteristics of roughness, irregularity, and randomly distributed asperities, the contact surface of the bolted components can function as a natural interferometer to scatter the propagation waves. The multiply-scattered coda waves can amplify the slight changes in the travel path and show the visible perturbation in the time domain. By calculating the time-shifted correlation coefficient of coda waves before and after the slight pre-load looseness, the tiny pre-load changes can be clearly revealed. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method, a theoretical model considering the time shifts of coda waves and the variations of pre-load is established. Based on the acoustoelastic effect and the wave path summation theory of coda wave interferometry, the model shows that the time shifts of coda waves change linearly with the variations of pre-load. Verification experiments are conducted, and the results show that the R-square values of the fitting curves are larger than 0.9216. In addition, the proposed approach has the feature of high resolution. The ultimate pre-load resolution of the proposed approach is 0.331%, that is, when the variation of pre-load is larger than 0.331%, it can be detected. Therefore, theoretical analysis and experimental results prove that the CWI-based pre-load detection approach holds great potential for the detection of bolt pre-load looseness, especially during the initial stage.
Corrosion of steel bars leads to significant structural deteriorations in reinforced concrete structures, increasing their maintenance costs and shortening their service life. Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars, as an internal reinforcing material instead of steel bars, are used in concrete structures owing to its high tensile strength and corrosion resistance. However, the structures of FRP reinforced concrete bending components have the large deflection and the lower post-cracking bending stiffness. In addition, it is difficult to evaluate the bending stiffness of in service FRP reinforced concrete beam by using the traditional monitoring method. This paper proposes a novel approach to real-time monitoring of the bending stiffness of FRP reinforced concrete beams using piezoceramic transducers enabled stress wave propagation. In this approach, several piezoceramic smart aggregate (SA) transducers are bonded on the side-surface of a concrete beam reinforced with Basalt-FRP (BFRP) bars to evaluate the bending stiffness based on stress wave propagation. A piezoceramic SA transducers based bending stiffness index (Piezo-BSI) is proposed to quantify the bending stiffness levels of BFRP reinforced concrete beams. The results show that the bending stiffness of BFRP reinforced concrete beams can be effectively evaluated by using SA transducers. The proposed Piezo-BSI values agree well with the actual bending stiffness index. This indicates that the Piezo-BSI values can accurately quantify and effectively reflect the actual bending stiffness levels of concrete beams reinforced with BFRP bars.
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