This contribution investigates the effect of marine growth and damage severity on the modal parameters of a scaled experimental model of a monopile used in supporting offshore wind turbines. A quick glimpse of the literature review reveals that this topic has not been well investigated as the majority of previous research focuses on the effect of marine growth on the hydrodynamic loads transferred to the test structure, with little focus on its effect on the modal parameters of a structure. Nevertheless, from a monitoring standpoint, it is important to differentiate between the effect of marine growth and damage on the modal parameters, especially when these parameters are used as damage indicators, further improving existing structural health monitoring techniques in determining if the changes observed in modal parameters are caused by actual damage rather than the growth of marine organisms with time. The results provided in this contribution provide differences between the effect of marine growth and damage, which is recommended to be included in current monitoring techniques. Furthermore, a recommendation to investigate the effect of damage on damping and, possibly, the potential of using changes in damping characteristics as damage indicators is also made.
Autonomous healing of cracks using capsule-based systems is emerging as a promising solution to restore the durability and strength of damaged structures. For satisfactory self-healing efficiency, both capsule geometry and dosage are to be determined for the concrete mix proportion. With previous research being performed on self-healing efficiency using different capsule shapes and crack patterns, his paper introduces quantitative numerical solutions on the optimal dosage of the capsules required to completely repair cracks in a three-dimensional model of a cementitious matrix. Four different sizes of spherical capsules ranging between 0.6mm to 4.75mm embedded within a mortar matrix were tested in the model and the model results were validated using previous experimental findings. As the capsules could carry powder or liquid self-healing agents, three different scenarios were considered in this work to calculate the volume of the healing agent in the crack. It was found that the smaller the capsules the more homogenous and uniform the distribution of capsules is. However, the bigger sizes of the capsules are much preferable in terms of the amount of self-healing materials supplied to the cracked vicinity. For instance, capsules of 2-4mm size could fill 80% of the crack volume but were localised and unevenly distributed on the planes of the crack. Overall, the developed model in this study provides a robust and efficient tool to quantitively design the proportions of cement-based self-healing systems. Based on the results of the geometric model, an ANN model was also developed to calculate healing volume in terms of the volume fraction of the healing agents and the size of capsules. Results showed very close values to those obtained by the numerical model.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.