TY - JOUR

T1 - Fiber Optic Sensors Embedded in Textile-Reinforced Concrete for Smart Structural Health Monitoring

T2 - A Review

AU - Alwis, Lourdes S.M.

AU - Bremer, Kort

AU - Roth, Bernhard

N1 - Funding Information: Funding: B.R. and K.B. acknowledges funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy within the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD (EXC 2122, Project ID 390833453).

PY - 2021/7/21

Y1 - 2021/7/21

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Fiber optic sensors

KW - Reinforcement of structures

KW - Sensors in civil engineering

KW - Smart sensing

KW - Structural health monitoring

KW - Textile reinforcement

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85110544310&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/s21154948

DO - 10.3390/s21154948

M3 - Review article

C2 - 34372185

AN - SCOPUS:85110544310

VL - 21

JO - Sensors

JF - Sensors

SN - 1424-8220

IS - 15

M1 - 4948

ER -