Failure Detection of reinforced concrete beams with embedded fiber optic Michelson sensors

The need to monitor and undertake remidial works on large structures has greatly increased in recent years due to the appearance of widespread faults in large structures such as bridges and buildings, etc, of 20 or more years of age. The health condition of structures must be monitored continuously to maintenance the structures. in order to do in-situ monitoring, the sensor is necessary to be embedded in the structures. Fiber optic sensors can be embedded in the structures to get the health information in the structures. The fiber sensor was constructed with 3x3 fiber couplers to sense the multi-point strains and failure instants. The 4 RC (reinforced concrete) beams were made to 2 of A type, 2 of B type beams. These beams were reinforced by the reinforcing bars, and were tested under the flexural loading. The behavior of the beams was simultaneously measured by the fiber optic sensors, electrical strain gages, and LVDT. The states of the beams were interpreted by these all signals. By these experiments, There were verified that the fiber optic sensors could measure the structural strains and failure instants of the RC beams. The fiber sensors were well operated until the failure of the beams. It was shown that the strains of the reinforcing steel bar can be used to monitor the health condition of the beams through the flexural test of RC beams. On the other words, the results were arrived that the two strains in the reinforcing bar measured at the same point can give the information of the structural health status. Also, the failure instants of beams were well detected from the fiber optic filtered signals.