Experimental behaviour of smart concrete embedded with micro carbon fibres as a sensing material

Abstract

While there are distinct structural health monitoring methods available, health monitoring using smart concrete is a newly emerging technique. In this technique, cement mortar/concrete is made as self-sensing by introducing carbon fibres in the conventional concrete that can sense strains/stresses/loads. Therefore to study in detail about this technique, in the present research, concrete cubes made from self-compacting concrete of 15 cm size reinforced with carbon fibres in various dosages were cast. Different tests have been performed on sufficient specimens that include stress/strain sensing and crack/damage sensing that resulted in finding co-relation between properties of concrete cube and change fractional resistance (FCR). The obtained results promised that when carbon fibres in the specimen are dosed with 1.5% can give the best co-relation between FCR and concrete cube properties and also the same dosage found to be best suited for stress sensing and crack/damage sensing.