Durability enhancement of prestressed concrete using smart materials: integrating self-healing mechanisms and monitoring systems

Written by a team of experts that has been working together for several years in the context of a research network involving international institutions, this book brings several applications related to smart material systems such as vibration and noise control, structural health monitoring, energy harvesting and shape memory alloys. Furthermore, this book also provides basic knowledge on the fundamentals of smart material systems and structures. Consequently, the present title serves as an important resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. In addition, it serves as a guide for engineers and scientists working with smart structures and materials both with an application and basic research perspective. Smart material systems and structures represent a new paradigm which is increasing the capabilities of engineering systems. Adaptability and versatility are some important aspects related to such systems. In brief, research on smart materials is characterized by synergistically combining different physical features, such as mechanical, electrical, chemical, and magnetic. As a result, smart material technologies have a huge potential to enhance the performance of engineering structures opening unlimited opportunities to innovation and economic benefits

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos in shape memory alloy systems

Ford has an extensive history of developing and utilizing smart and innovative materials in its vehicles. In this paper, we present new challenges the automotive industry is facing and explore how intelligent uses of smart materials can help provide solutions. We explore which vehicle attributes may provide most advantageous for the use smart materials, and discuss how smart material have had technical challenges that limit their use. We also look at how smart materials such as gecko inspired adhesion is providing opportunities during the vehicle assembly process by improving manufacturing quality, environmental sustainability, and worker safety. An emerging area for deployment of smart materials may involve autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions, where customer expectations are migrating toward a seamless and adaptive experience leading to new expectations for an enhanced journey. Another area where smart materials are influencing change is interior and exterior design including smart textiles, photochromatic dyes, and thermochromatic materials. The key to advancing smart materials in automotive industry is to capitalize on the smaller niche applications where there will be an advantage over traditional methods. Ford has an extensive history of developing and utilizing smart and innovative materials. Magnetorheological fluids, thermoelectric materials, piezoelectric actuators, and shape memory alloys are all in production. In this paper we present new challenges the automotive industry is facing and explore how intelligent uses of smart materials can help provide solutions. We explore which vehicle attributes may provide most advantageous for the use smart materials, and discuss how smart materials have had technical challenges that limit their use. An emerging area for deployment of smart materials may involve autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions, where customer expectations may require a seamless and adaptive experience for users having various expectations.

New technological development of passive and active vibration control: analysis andtest

Welcome to the 2014 volume of Smart Materials and Structures

Many industrial and commercial sectors are made up of separate, relatively small components: aerospace and ground transport, for example. In such applications, truly smart materials systems (SMS) are defined as those that respond autonomously to changes in their operating conditions. That is, they detect the onset of “illness” and take steps to effect a cure. In contrast, the electric power industry is a vast, interconnected enterprise, not a collection of individual entities. It is a far‐flung grid, fed and drained continuously at variable rates. SMS must be consistent with this character: owing to the extent of the grid and the way it operates, just detecting illnessand determining its locationconstitutes smartness. Moreover, users of electricity expect reliability everywhere the grid reaches, so avoiding failures (outages) is paramount. Thus,distributedSMS are often required to achieve reliability. Some other sectors (e.g., highways) also will rely on distributed SMS, but in electricity systems the SMS must function under more hostile conditions of temperature, pressure, aggressive chemicals, and especially, intense electric and/or magnetic fields. Early detection of deviations or trouble is vital. In a sense, successful performances of SMS in the power industry equates to buying time for a rational response. Whatever else they might do by way of autonomous responses (derating a unit, eliminating an ailing component from a redundant set, etc.), the crucial action for SMS in electricity systems is to notify a central authority about an (impending) illness and where that illness is.Although investment in SMS research by the power industry has been substantial, utilization of SMS within the industry is still in the early stages. There is little doubt, however, that the influence of SMS will be profound in the future. This article discussed where smart materials can be used in the power production process and challenges awaiting smart materials solutions.

14 - Nickel–titanium smart hybrid materials for automotive industry

During the last few decades, active composites have been in the focus of intense technological and fundamental researches from industry and academia, respectively. Besides, the wide use of passive composites in transport vehicles and infrastructures led to their functionalisation for their monitoring and control. Good candidates for related sensing, actuation or transduction functions are the so-called smart materials, such as piezoelectric materials, shape memory alloys or polymers, electroor magneto-strictive materials, electroor magnetorheological fluids and electro-active polymers. With the help of integrated control algorithms and processing devices, passive material systems and structures become smart; therefore, due to their multi-physical and multi-disciplinary nature, their multi-scale modelling and simulation are still not yet fully mastered. Hence, in order to reach robust designs of these advanced smart material systems and structures, special fundamental and applied research efforts are still required in order to reach: (i) materials multi-physical effective properties complete and reliable data sets; (ii) efficient multi-scale models and local/global solutions; (iii) mastering integrity and reliability critical issues for wider and safer applications. This focused issue of Acta Mechanica presents six revised, from ten peer-reviewed, manuscripts that were extended after their selection from the twelve contributions presented in two sessions at the Mini-Symposium MS27 on Multi-scale Mechanics of Smart Material Systems and Structures, co-organised by the present guest editors during the 8th European Solid Mechanics Conference held at Graz (Austria) on 9–13 July 2012. These six papers focused on one or more of the above mentioned research issues of Multi-scale Mechanics of Smart Material Systems and Structures; in particular, Micro-mechanics-based numerical homogenisations of magneto-electro-rheological particle and piezoelectric fibre reinforced polymer composite material systems, local (section)-global (structural) analytical models and solutions for the piezoelectric d15 shear-induced torsion actuation and sensing problems, multi-scale fatigue life analyses of polymer encapsulated piezoceramic transducers, and behaviour and response nonlinearities analyses for healthy and cracked piezoelectric transducers at room or cryogenic temperatures. It is hoped that this focused issue contributes to the progress of this topic state-of-the-art and serves the research needs of the Acta Mechanica readers. As a closure, we would like to thank the authors, for their high quality contributions; the reviewers, for their constructive expertises; and the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Hans Irschik, for letting us the entire freedom of this issue management and his editorial administration team for the great help in managing anonymously the managing guest editor’s co-authored contributions.

Smart materials types, properties and applications: A review

Smart materials and structures are inspired in nature and try to mimic adaptive characteristics of natural systems. In brief, it is possible to say that smart materials have special properties that couple mechanical and non-mechanical fields, conferring adaptive characteristics. Smart systems and structures use this kind of material as sensors and actuators. In general there are four major groups of smart materials: piezoelectric, shape memory alloys, magnetostrictive materials, electro-magneto rheological fluids. Nowadays, several fields of science and technology are exploiting the remarkable properties of smart systems and structures including bioengineering, aerospace engineering, robotics and vibration/shape control. Therefore, several applications have been developed, giving the increasing importance to this kind of system. In order to consolidate this new design paradigm in Brazil, several research groups from different Brazilian Universities and also international partners created the National Institute of Science and Technology of Smart Structures in Engineering (INCT-EIE) . Moreover, the Brazilian community created the Committee of Smart Materials and Structures of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (M&EInt/ABCM) . In order to celebrate the consolidation of this area in Brazil, we are producing this Special Issue on Smart Materials and Structures of the Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering. This special issue presents a general overview of the activities of the Brazilian community together with the international partners. Applications of piezoelectric materials and shape memory alloys are mainly discussed in the contributions. Kalamkarov and Savi (2012) presented a review of micromechanical modeling of smart composite structures reinforced by a periodic grid that can exhibit piezoelectric behavior. The asymptotic homogenization is employed. Trindade and Benjeddou (2012) developed a parametric analysis of effective material properties of thickness-shear piezoelectric macro-fibre composites. Finite element homogenization method is employed evaluating the influence of several parameters on material properties. Medeiros et al. (2012) presented a procedure to evaluate effective properties on smart composite materials with piezoelectric fibers. Finite element method is applied for unidirectional periodic piezoelectric composites. Nitzsche (2012) discussed the realization of semi-active actuators employed for application in structural control. The general idea is applied for an actuator using piezoelectric material as adaptive material. Motter et al. (2012) discussed vibration-based energy harvesting employing piezoelectric materials. Different rectifier circuits are of concern, analyzing numerical and experimental results. Abreu et al. (2012) presented a discussion about active vibration control of a cantilever beam using a model-based digital controller and piezoelectric sensor and actuators. The main focus of the paper is the design of the controller, showing experimental results that assure its efficacy. Martins et al. (2012) treated the structural health monitoring for aeronautical applications by using piezoelectric materials. Electromechanical impedance measures are employed to perform nondestructive inspection. The paper discussed a case study of an aluminum aircraft window with satisfactory results. De Paula et al. (2012) investigated the nonlinear dynamics of large-scale space structures with embedded shape memory alloy actuators. The investigation considered an archetypal model composed of a single mass connected by SMA elements. This system has a complex behavior including chaos. The paper discussed some aspects of the system dynamics giving special attention for the influence of geometrical imperfections. Lima et al. (2012) discussed the control of a beam using shape memory alloys as actuators. A PI controller is employed to an experimental rig showing its applicability for the deformation control.

Gradual changes occur in the internal forces and deflections of reinforced pre-stressed concrete (PSC) flexural members owing to the combined effects of concrete creep and shrinkage, and relaxation of pre-stress. For wide-scale use of PSC members in civil engineering applications (e.g. long-span bridge girders), this long-term behaviour must be minimised. The ability of shape memory alloy (SMA) bars to restrict the growth of time-dependent and thermal strains in reinforced PSC beams was investigated up to concrete age of 350 days using four laboratory-scale models. It was observed that the growth of time-dependent strain was less in the treated PSC beams reinforced with a combination of SMA and conventional steel bars than in controlled PSC beams with only conventional steel bars. Analysis of the results of the experimental beams showed that the presence of SMA bars increases the cracking moment and effective moment of inertia of the treated specimens. This makes the treated beams stiffer and restricts the growth of time-dependent strain and deflections. The experimentally obtained strain values were compared with predicted strain values of similar size and grade of plain concrete (PC) beam using model code ACI 318, and it was found that the strain in treated PSC beams was less than that in PC beams.

The aim of this work is to effect experimental investigations comparatively to numerical simulations on superelastic shape-memory alloys (SMAs) and specially its importance when this latter is reinforced by smart composite materials. The obtained material is then a special kind of “smart materials” whose dimensions change due to temperature variations depending on structural phase transition. The shape memory alloys were investigated by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and tensile testing; however, the superelastic model is simulated by hysteresis modeling of SMA materials based on finite elements method (FEM). The obtained results of the numerical simulations are compared with the experimental work and good correlations between the stress-strain curves for different cases of temperatures are found. Consequently, and beyond this work, these results allow the concept, the design, the modelling as well as the production of smart composite materials reinforced by SMA.

Background:The vital role of smart materials in the field of aircraft, spacecraft, defence, electronics, electrical, medical and healthcare industries involve sensing and actuating for monitoring and controlling applications. The class of smart materials are also named as active materials or intelligent materials or adaptive materials. These materials act intelligently based upon the environmental conditions. Structures incorporated with smart materials are named as smart structures.Methods:The principal objective of the present paper is to explore a comprehensive review of various smart materials viz. piezoelectric materials, Shape Memory Alloy, micro sensors and fibre optic sensors. The significance of these intelligent materials in various fields are also deliberately presented in this work from the perspective of Patents and literatures test data.Results:Smart Materials possesses multifunctional capabilities. The smart materials viz. piezoelectric materials, Shape Memory Alloy, micro sensors and fibre optic sensors are embedded with structures like aircraft, spacecraft, automotive, bridges, and buildings for the purpose of exhibiting Structural Health Monitoring system. Smart materials are finding increasing applications in the present aircraft, spacecraft, automotive, electronics and healthcare industries.Conclusion:Innovative ideas would become reality by integrating the any structure with Smart Materials.

Smart materials and structures offer significant commercial potential beyond their intended aerospace uses. ITN Energy Systems has been aggressively pursuing the commercialization to shape memory alloys, and present herein several product development case studies. We also provide recommendations for material improvements which would enhance marketability of shape memory and other smart materials systems.

Adaptive and active materials: selected papers from the ASME 2013 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS 13) (Snowbird, UT, USA, 16–18 September 2013)