Piezoresistivity of smart carbon nanotubes (CNTs) reinforced cementitious composite under integrated cyclic compression and impact

Abstract

The cyclic compression and four series of fixed magnitude impact loads with an increment of 50 times were conducted alternatively on the smart carbon nanotubes (CNTs) reinforced cementitious composites, to evaluate the piezoresistive sensitivity and repeatability of composites after exposed to different drop impact energies. The results show that the impacts procedure suddenly increased in electrical resistivity due to the emerged micro-cracks and pores, and higher impact energy led to faster resistivity increase. On the other hand, when the impact is repeatedly applied, a high impact resistance of the cementitious composites could be observed, which was attributed to the dense microstructures. Moreover, instead of instable and uneven output of electrical resistivity during cyclical compression, more stable and uniform fractional changes of resistivity were achieved after exposed to impact load. However, severe nonlinearity with swift resistivity reduction of cementitious composites under low loads was observed at the beginning and the end of cyclic compression after subjected to many impacts with impact energy of 18.72 × 10−4 J/cm3. The related outcomes of smart conductive cementitious composites subjected to cyclic compression and impact will provide an insight into the stable electrical signal output and promote the applications of cement-based sensors for structural health monitoring under various loading conditions.