Structural health monitoring of concrete columns subjected to seismic excitations using piezoceramic-based sensors

Abstract

Structural health monitoring of concrete structures under seismic loads has always attracted a lot of attention in the earthquake engineering community. In this paper, two tests of structural health monitoring of concrete columns using piezoceramic-based sensors are presented. The first test was a shake table test of a reinforced concrete (RC) column. A piezoceramic-based device, called a 'smart aggregate', was pre-embedded and adopted for the structural health monitoring of the concrete column under earthquake excitations. The second test of this study was the in situ health monitoring of RC piers of Niu-Dou Bridge in Taiwan, under seismic loading. RC piers instrumented with the post-embedded piezoceramic-based sensors were tested using reversed cyclic loading. During the shake table test and the in situ reversed cyclic loading test, one sensor was used as an actuator to generate propagating waves, and the other sensors were used to detect the waves. By analyzing the wave response, the existence of cracks can be detected and the severity can be estimated. The experimental results demonstrate the sensitivity and the effectiveness of the piezoceramic-based approach in the structural health monitoring of large-scale concrete structures under earthquake loading.

Thin crack observation in a reinforced concrete bridge pier test using image processing and analysis

“…This program utilizes some existing tools for stereo calibration, triangulation, and the kernel of image analysis. The tools used for each image analysis procedure are listed below: (1)- (19)). (4) Metric rectification: MATLAB scripts (see Eqs.…”

“…The in-situ test was carried out for multiple purposes that drew researchers investigating various topics such as structural failure behaviors, numerical modeling strategies, and experimental techniques. For instance, Liao et al verified a structural health monitoring method using piezoceramic sensors [19], Chao and Loh demonstrated the performance of their signal processing method [20], and Chiou et al studied the lateral strength of bridge foundation in gravel [21]. In this paper, the top of a bridge pier named Pier 4 was loaded at its top with a cyclic displacement.…”

Continuous wave measurements in a network of transducers for structural health monitoring of a large concrete floor slab

“…Yan et al, 20 Liao et al, 21 and Song et al 22 used continuous waves in SHM of concrete beams subjected to damage. The frequency of the continuous transmission was swept over an interval, and the energy at different frequency bands was calculated using wavelet package decomposition.…”

Numerical modeling of damage detection in concrete beams using piezoelectric patches

“…Experimental damage detection can be performed using smart aggregates for different structural elements under static load, such as beams [1,11,16], bridge "T" bent-cap [10], and piles [13]. Monitoring and detection of cracks caused by dynamic effects is performed to the shear walls [15], columns [17,18] and reinforce concrete frames [2]. Deboned detection using embedded piezoelectric elements in reinforced concrete beams was analyzed in paper [7].…”