Strain and damage self-sensing cement composites with conductive graphene nanoplatelet

Abstract

A novel cement composite containing graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) which can sense its own strain and damage is introduced in this paper. Piezoresistive strain sensing was investigated for mortar specimens with GNP under both cyclic and monotonically increasing compressive and tensile strain. Under compression, the electrical resistance decreased with increasing strain and the normalized resistance can be described by a bilinear curve with a kink at about 400 microstrain. At low strain, a high gauge factor exceeding 103 in magnitude was obtained and it increased almost linearly with the GNP content. This can be attributed primarily to the reducing interfacial distance and forming of better contacts between GNP and cement paste when the composite was initially loaded. At higher compressive strain beyond 400 microstrain, the gauge factor is consistently about 102 for GNP content exceeding the percolation threshold. A different response was observed for specimens under tension due to the formation and propagation of microcracks even at low tensile strain due to the brittleness of the material. The initial gauge factor is of the order 102 for tensile strain up to 100 microstrain and it increases exponentially beyond that. The damage self-sensing capability of this conductive cement composites is explored using electric potential method. Closed form expression for the assessment of damage are derived based on the mathematical analogy between the electrostatic field and the elastostatic field under anti-plane shear loading. The derived expression provide a quick and accurate assessment of the damage of this conductive material which is characterized by its change in compliance.