Monitoring of smart concrete beams in flexure using polymer-based composite sensors

Concrete may the economical material available for buildings and civil structures due to various important its properties such as high compressive strength, wear resistance, abrasion resistance and durability. The most disadvantages of concrete structural elements are its cracks in flexure. Visual inspection is difficult and provides little detailed information in crack conditions. Recently, a new trend, called smart concrete or structure, has been emerged using various technologies for monitoring of crack conditions of concrete. A method designed to monitor or characterize the crack conditions in concrete beams in flexure using polymerbased composite sensors is conducted in the present work. The embedded polymer-based composite sensor shows a potential to evaluate the conditions of concrete's cracks in beams under flexural loading such as initial and critical crack conditions, using data acquisition system.