Crack Detection of a Full-Scale Reinforced Concrete Girder with a Distributed Cable Sensor

Abstract

A new concept of designing cable sensors for health monitoring of large-scale civil infrastructure has recently been proposed by the present authors. The concept was developed based on the change in topology of the outer conductor of a coaxial cable sensor. One such sensor was fabricated with its outer conductor tightly wrapped with a commercial tin-plated steel spiral that was covered with solder. It was mounted near the surface of a 15 m long reinforced concrete (RC) girder with a 762 mm square hollow cross section and 152 mm thick walls. The girder was tested under a progressively increasing cyclic torsion creating 45° inclined cracks around and along the girder. The main objectives of this study were to implement the distributed cable sensor technology in large-scale reinforced concrete structures, to understand the performance of a sensor under cyclic loading for detecting and locating cracks, and, finally, to address implementation issues such as signal loss, non-uniformity in sensor construction, and recoverability.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Second Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Beams and Girders; Coaxial Cables; Concrete Construction; Condition Monitoring; Cyclic Loads; Dielectric Materials; Reinforced Concrete; Sensors; Soldering Alloys; Strain; Topology; Crack Detection; Cyclic Torsion; Distributed Cable Sensors; Reinforcement Corrosion; Cracks

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0964-1726

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2005 Institute of Physics - IOP Publishing, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jun 2005

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