Monitoring of prestressed concrete beam under corrosion using embedded piezo sensor based on electro-mechanical impedance technique

Abstract

<h2>Abstract</h2> The service life and durability of the prestressed concrete (PC) structures mainly depend on the corrosion resistance of the prestressing strands, wires, or tendons. Once corrosion occurs in the strands, identifying the location and quantifying the phases of corrosion is a very challenging task. Thus, this paper presents a novel way to monitor the corrosion process in a PC beam using an embedded piezo sensor (EPS) based on the electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique. The accelerated corrosion tests were conducted on a PC beam in which EPS was attached to the prestressing wire inside the beam to monitor the changes in the EMI signature during the corrosion progression. Further, this study identifies the deterioration in mechanical changes such as stiffness, mass, and damping by extracting the equivalent structural parameters (ESPs) from the raw EMI signatures. Based on qualitative and quantitative results, it is found that the EPS effectively senses the changes and identifies the different phases of corrosion. Also, the ESPs are realistically measuring the material deterioration under corrosion. Hence, the EMI technique based on EPS in structural health monitoring of PC beam can accurately assess the deterioration under the effect of corrosion.