Doctoral Dissertations
Abstract
"Coaxial cables are mainly composed of inner and outer conductors, and a dielectric layer in between. In this study they are proposed as continuous sensors for monitoring of civil infrastructures. Due to small deformation and minor cracks of engineering interest, coaxial cables have never been applied into reinforced concrete (RC) structures until the late 1990s. The state of the art in design of a cable sensor is to replace the polyethylene pipe of a commercial cable with a rubber tube as a dielectric layer to increase the cable’s sensitivity up to 10 times. In this dissertation a new design of prototype cable sensor is proposed. The new sensors not only respond to the cable’s elongation directly but, more significantly, to the topology change in the outer conductor associated with the cable elongation. The latter effect is first proposed and investigated in this study.
An analytical model of the proposed sensor design was developed in this study to establish the relation between the directly measurable quantities with design parameters. Four types of the sensors with various parameters were also numerically simulated to confirm the analytical results. Both analytical and numerical results were validated through experimentation. After having calibrated with the strain applied on them, the sensors were embedded into twelve RC beams to understand how sensitive they are to stressing and cracking in RC beams. The results from the flexural tests indicated that the sensitivity of the newly designed sensors is 50~100 times higher than that of commercial cables to the longitudinal elongation. The new sensors can be used to successfully detect both the location and width of a crack in RC members"--Abstract, page iii.
Advisor(s)
Chen, Genda
Committee Member(s)
Cheng, Franklin Y.
Belarbi, Abdeldjelil
LaBoube, Roger A.
Drewniak, James L.
Rao, Vittal S.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Degree Name
Ph. D. in Civil Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
Intelligent Systems Center
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Publication Date
Spring 2003
Pagination
xiv, 164 pages
Note about bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-163).
Rights
© 2003 Huimin Mu, All rights reserved.
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted Access
File Type
text
Language
English
Subject Headings
Reinforced concrete construction
Coaxial cables
Smart materials
Detectors
Thesis Number
T 8641
Print OCLC #
62139319
Link to Catalog Record
Electronic access to the full-text of this document is restricted to Missouri S&T users. Otherwise, request this publication directly from Missouri S&T Library or contact your local library.
http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b5379238~S5Recommended Citation
Mu, Huimin, "Development and validation of coaxial cable sensors for damage detection of reinforced concrete structures" (2003). Doctoral Dissertations. 1575.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/1575
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Comments
This study was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No.CMS9733123 and No.CMS0200381, and by the Intelligent Systems Center at the University of Missouri--Rolla.