Development of a relationship between external measurements and reinforcement stress
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Publication Date
2015-03-27Journal Title
Proceedings of SPIE
ISSN
0277-786X
Publisher
SPIE
Volume
9435
Number
943519
Language
English
Type
Conference Object
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Brault, A., Hoult, N. A., & Lees, J. (2015). Development of a relationship between external measurements and reinforcement stress. Proceedings of SPIE, 9435 (943519)https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2175830
Abstract
As many countries around the world face an aging infrastructure crisis, there is an increasing need to develop more
accurate monitoring and assessment techniques for reinforced concrete structures. One of the challenges associated with
assessing existing infrastructure is correlating externally measured parameters such as crack widths and surface strains
with reinforcement stresses as this is dependent on a number of variables. The current research investigates how the use
of distributed fiber optic sensors to measure reinforcement strain can be correlated with digital image correlation
measurements of crack widths to relate external crack width measurements to reinforcement stresses. An initial set of
experiments was undertaken involving a series of small-scale beam specimens tested in three-point bending with variable
reinforcement properties. Relationships between crack widths and internal reinforcement strains were observed including
that both the diameter and number of bars affected the measured maximum strain and crack width. A model that uses
measured crack width to estimate reinforcement strain was presented and compared to the experimental results. The
model was found to provide accurate estimates of load carrying capacity for a given crack width, however, the model
was potentially less accurate when crack widths were used to estimate the experimental reinforcement strains. The need
for more experimental data to validate the conclusions of this research was also highlighted.
Keywords
Assessment, crack widths, Digital Image Correlation, distributed fiber optic strain sensors, reinforced concrete structures
Sponsorship
The authors would like to thank the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada
Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund for their financial support of this research. The authors would
also like to thank Adam Hoag, Jaime Escobar, Neil Porter, and Paul Thrasher for their assistance with the experimental
program.
Funder references
EPSRC (EP/J002887/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2175830
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/248689
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales
Licence URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/
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