Concrete cracks which are gradually extended, damaged and destructed by the load have become difficult to be solved in
engineering. Due to the advantages of convenient production, high sensitivity, reasonable performance-price ratio, selfsensing,
piezoelectric ceramic (such as PZT) smart aggregates used as sensor and actuator are embedded in the
reinforced concrete beams to generate sin-sweep excitation signals on-line and detect real-time signals with digital
oscilloscope before and after damage. The optimal extraction damage signals are extracted and statistical pattern
recognition algorithm of wavelet decomposition about the detection signals is established by wavelet analysis and
statistical characteristics analysis. The statistical distribution of signal amplitude and the relevant damage indicators are
proposed for the use of active health monitoring and energy damage principles. The results of loading tests show that the
amplitude of active monitoring signal produced a larger attenuation after damage and sweep wave signals used in active
health monitoring are effective in identifying the different health status of structure. The statistical pattern recognition
algorithm based on wavelet packet decomposition can effectively detect crack damages of concrete structure. This
technology may open a new road for active and permanent monitoring and damage detection on line as well as
development of active health monitoring system based on probability statistics of piezoelectric concrete.
The technique of structure health monitoring (SHM) has become a reaching hotspot in civil engineering field at present.
The successful application of smart materials in this field has greatly promoted the development of the SHM. Among the
smart materials, the piezoelectric material has been paid much attention for its good characteristic and low price. The
well competitive properties have had a wide application prospect in SHM field. In this paper, the crack monitoring
technique for concrete columns using piezoceramic transducers was experimentally developed. In the experiment, the
piezoceramic transducers were embedded into two concrete columns under the large and small eccentric compression
loads, respectively. The acoustic emission was used for the identification of the crack generation and development. For
the detection of the crack level, a wave-based method for the damaged columns was used and the damage level was
determined by compare of the health and damage signals. The experimental results show that acoustic emission based on
piezoceramic transducers can be used in the crack monitoring of reinforced concrete structure.
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