Fiber Optic Sensors Embedded in Textile-Reinforced Concrete for Smart Structural Health Monitoring

A Review

authored by
Lourdes S.M. Alwis, Kort Bremer, Bernhard Roth
Abstract

The last decade has seen rapid developments in the areas of carbon fiber technology, additive manufacturing technology, sensor engineering, i.e., wearables, and new structural reinforcement techniques. These developments, although from different areas, have collectively paved way for concrete structures with non-corrosive reinforcement and in-built sensors. Therefore, the purpose of this effort is to bridge the gap between civil engineering and sensor engineering communities through an overview on the up-to-date technological advances in both sectors, with a special focus on textile reinforced concrete embedded with fiber optic sensors. The introduction section highlights the importance of reducing the carbon footprint resulting from the building industry and how this could be effectively achieved by the use of state-of-the-art reinforcement techniques. Added to these benefits would be the implementations on infrastructure monitoring for the safe operation of structures though their entire lifespan by utilizing sensors, specifically, fiber optic sensors. The paper presents an extensive description on fiber optic sensor engineering that enables the incorporation of sensors into the reinforcement mechanism of a structure at its manufacturing stage, enabling effective monitoring and a wider range of capabilities when compared to conventional means of structural health monitoring. In future, these developments, when combined with artificial intelligence concepts, will lead to distributed sensor networks for smart monitoring applications, particularly enabling such distributed networks to be implemented/embedded at their manufacturing stage.

Organisation(s)
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines
Hannover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT)
External Organisation(s)
Napier University
Type
Review article
Journal
Sensors
Volume
21
ISSN
1424-8220
Publication date
21.07.2021
Publication status
Published
Peer reviewed
Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Analytical Chemistry, Information Systems, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biochemistry, Instrumentation, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Electronic version(s)
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21154948 (Access: Open)