Galao Malo, Oscar, Baeza, F. Javier, Zornoza, Emilio, Garcés, Pedro
Carbon Nanofiber Cement Sensors to Detect Strain and Damage of Concrete Specimens Under Compression
Galao O, Baeza FJ, Zornoza E, Garcés P. Carbon Nanofiber Cement Sensors to Detect Strain and Damage of Concrete Specimens Under Compression. Nanomaterials. 2017; 7(12):413. doi:10.3390/nano7120413
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/71531
DOI: 10.3390/nano7120413
ISSN: 2079-4991
Abstract: 
Cement composites with nano-additions have been vastly studied for their functional applications, such as strain and damage sensing. The capacity of a carbon nanofiber (CNF) cement paste has already been tested. However, this study is focused on the use of CNF cement composites as sensors in regular concrete samples. Different measuring techniques and humidity conditions of CNF samples were tested to optimize the strain and damage sensing of this material. In the strain sensing tests (for compressive stresses up to 10 MPa), the response depends on the maximum stress applied. The material was more sensitive at higher loads. Furthermore, the actual load time history did not influence the electrical response, and similar curves were obtained for different test configurations. On the other hand, damage sensing tests proved the capability of CNF cement composites to measure the strain level of concrete samples, even for loads close to the material’s strength. Some problems were detected in the strain transmission between sensor and concrete specimens, which will require specific calibration of each sensor one attached to the structure.
Keywords:Carbon nanofibers (CNFs), Strain sensing, Damage sensing, Cement composites
MDPI
info:eu-repo/semantics/article