Structural Health Monitoring of Prestressed Concrete Beams by Vibration- and Impedance-based Smart Technologies

In this study, vibration- and impedance-based smart technologies are presented for structural health monitoring (SHM) of prestressed concrete (PSC) beams. The following approaches are implemented in order to achieve the objective. Firstly, smart sensors' hardware and embedded software are designed for vibration and impedance monitoring. In the design, a sensor node to measure PZT's dynamic strain is newly proposed. Secondly, vibration and impedance responses experimentally measured from a PSC beam are examined to verify the feasibility of the smart sensors for SHM. At least two behaviours of the PSC beam are examined as follows: 1) interaction between girder's vibration and cable's vibration and 2) effect of wind speeds on vibration and impedance responses. Finally, the accuracy of cable force monitoring by the smart sensors is evaluated for the PSC beam.