Detecting Debonding between Steel Beam and Reinforcing CFRP Plate Using Active Sensing with Removable PZT-Based Transducers

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates are widely used to retrofit or reinforce steel structures, and the debonding damage between the steel structure and the CFRP plate is a typical failure in strengthening steel structures. This paper proposes a new approach to detecting debonding between a steel beam and a reinforcing CFRP plate by using removable lead zirconate titanate (PZT)-based transducers and active sensing. The removable PZT-based transducers are used to implement the active sensing approach, in which one transducer, as an actuator, is used to generate stress wave, and another transducer, as a sensor, is used to detect the stress wave that propagates across the bonding between the steel beam and the reinforcing CFRP plate. The bonding condition significantly influences the received sensor signal, and a wavelet-packet-based energy index (WPEI) is used to quantify the energy of the received signal to evaluate the severity of debonding between the steel beam and the reinforcing CFRP plate. To validate the proposed approach, experimental studies were performed, and two removable PZT-based transducers were designed and fabricated to detect the debonding between a steel beam and the reinforcing CRFP plate. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in detecting the debonding between a steel beam and the reinforcing CFRP plate using removable PZT-based transducers.

Detecting of the Crack and Leakage in the Joint of Precast Concrete Segmental Bridge Using Piezoceramic Based Smart Aggregate

“…WPEI has been used as a quantitative method to analyze the received signals and to evaluate the structural health [ 61 , 62 , 63 ]. The WPEI is sensitively correlated to the defect condition of the epoxy joint.…”

Uniaxial Compressive Behavior of Concrete Columns Confined with Superelastic Shape Memory Alloy Wires

“…Civil infrastructures are often operated in environments with adverse factors, such as corrosion [1,2], vibration and fatigue [3,4], impacts [5][6][7][8], seismic excitations [9][10][11], strong wind or hurricane [12], among others, and these adverse factors often result in component and/or structural damages, which should be detected and repaired in time to prevent catastrophic events from happening [13]. Structural health monitoring (SHM) [13,14] and damage detection [14][15][16][17][18] and structural retrofit and repair [19,20] have been developed to address these two issues. Concrete columns are commonly used in civil infrastructures, and SMH and retrofit of concrete columns have been actively researched.…”

Numerical Study of Concrete Mesostructure Effect on Lamb Wave Propagation

“…So far, a number of various approaches devoted to solving different problems have been proposed. Ultrasonic waves are most commonly used for crack detection [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], monitoring the hardening process [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ], as well as for the quality assessment of the adhesive connection between concrete cover and reinforcement [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. The method of scanning the surface opening cracks in reinforced concrete structures using transient elastic waves was developed by Liu et al [ 1 ].…”

“…Several scientific papers were devoted to guided waves for the detection of debonding occurring between concrete and internal or external reinforcement [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Monitoring of the interfacial debonding of a concrete-filled pultrusion-GFRP tubular column based on stress wave propagation was conducted by Yang et al [ 12 ].…”