Cyclic Crack Monitoring of a Reinforced Concrete Column under Simulated Pseudo-Dynamic Loading Using Piezoceramic-Based Smart Aggregates

Qingzhao Kong,Rachel Robert,Y Mo,Pedro Silva

doi:10.3390/app6110341

Qingzhao Kong, Rachel Robert + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/app6110341

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Abstract

Structural health monitoring is an important aspect of maintenance for bridge columns in areas of high seismic activity. In this project, recently developed piezoceramic-based transducers, known as smart aggregates (SA), were utilized to perform structural health monitoring of a reinforced concrete (RC) bridge column subjected to pseudo-dynamic loading. The SA-based approach has been previously verified for static and dynamic loading but never for pseudo-dynamic loading. Based on the developed SAs, an active-sensing approach was developed to perform real-time health status evaluation of the RC column during the loading procedure. The existence of cracks attenuated the stress wave transmission energy during the loading procedure and reduced the amplitudes of the signal received by SA sensors. To detect the crack evolution and evaluate the damage severity, a wavelet packet-based structural damage index was developed. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of the SAs in structural health monitoring of the RC column under pseudo-dynamic loading. In addition to monitoring the general severity of the damage, the local structural damage indices show potential to report the cyclic crack open-close phenomenon subjected to the pseudo-dynamic loading.

Highlights

Reinforced concrete (RC) is the most common material used in infrastructure such as bridges [1,2].reinforced concrete (RC) columns are often the primary elements of energy dissipation in bridges subjected to seismic loads.Failure of bridge columns can cause the collapse of bridge girders, which has been the catastrophic scenario for the majority of bridges damaged in past earthquakes
With attractive features of low-cost, small size, large bandwidth, and actuating-sensing functions, piezoceramics have been increasingly employed in many engineering fields [3,4,5,6,7]
smart aggregates (SA) have been successfully implemented for structural health monitoring of various concrete structures under different loading cases including: a concrete bridge bent-cap under static loading [13], a concrete frame under static loading [14,15], a shear wall under reversed cyclic loading [16], columns under seismic loading [17], stress wave base communication in concrete structures [18,19] and columns under reversed cyclic loading [20,21]. The purpose of this project was to further verify the effectiveness of the smart aggregate in health monitoring of a RC concrete column tested with pseudo-dynamic loads

Summary

Introduction

RC columns are often the primary elements of energy dissipation in bridges subjected to seismic loads. Failure of bridge columns can cause the collapse of bridge girders, which has been the catastrophic scenario for the majority of bridges damaged in past earthquakes. With attractive features of low-cost, small size, large bandwidth, and actuating-sensing functions, piezoceramics have been increasingly employed in many engineering fields [3,4,5,6,7]. In this project, piezoceramic-based devices, called smart aggregates (SA), were utilized as transducers for structural

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Results

Conclusion