Monitoring corrosion of reinforcement in concrete structures via fiber Bragg grating sensors

Corrosion of steel and rebar in concrete structures is one of the most frequent reasons for civil infrastructure failures. Thus, improving the effective corrosion sensor technology can greatly reduce cost and provide safe structures with long service lives. However, assessing the corrosion condition of rebars is not simple because they are buried in concrete. In this paper, using fiber Bragg grating (FBG), a corrosion sensor for monitoring steel rebars embedded in a concrete structure is developed and validated by experiments. Based on the fact that the volume and diameter of a rebar embedded in concrete will enlarge due to corrosion, an FBG packaged with fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) is wrapped on the steel bar. During corrosion, the increase in the bar diameter leads to the increase in fiber strain, which can be measured by the shift of the wavelength of FBG. Performances of the corrosion sensor are validated by accelerating corrosion in lab experiments. The corrosion sensor is embedded in a concrete specimen put in a 5% sodium chloride solution with a constant current. Experimental results show that the corrosion sensor can monitor the concurrence of corrosion of rebars in concrete. The corrosion extent can be quantitatively evaluated through the change in the wavelength of FBG. Therefore, the corrosion sensor developed in this paper is feasible for monitoring the early corrosion of rebars in concrete.