Damage Evaluation in Shear-Critical Reinforced Concrete Beam using Piezoelectric Transducers as Smart Aggregates

Damage detection at early cracking stages in shear-critical reinforced concrete beams, before further deterioration and their inevitable brittle shear failure is crucial for structural safety and integrity. The effectiveness of a structural health monitoring technique using the admittance measurements of piezoelectric transducers mounted on a reinforced concrete beam without shear reinforcement is experimentally investigated. Embedded smart aggregate transducers and externally bonded piezoelectric patches have been placed in arrays at both shear spans of the beam. Beam were tested till total shear failure and monitored at three different states; healthy, flexural cracking and diagonal cracking. Test results showed that transducers close to the critical diagonal crack provided sound and graduated discrepancies between the admittance responses at the healthy state and the damage levels. Damage assessment using statistical indices calculated from the measurements of all transducers was also attempted. Rational changes of the index values were obtained with respect to the increase of the damage. Admittance responses and index values of the transducers located on the shear span where the critical diagonal crack formed provided cogent evidence of damage. On the contrary, negligible indication of damage was yielded by the responses of the transducers located on the other shear span, where no diagonal cracking occurred.