Performance of smart piezoceramic patches in health monitoring of a RC bridge

This paper presents the results of a health monitoring study, carried out during the destructive load testing of a prototype reinforced concrete (RC) bridge. The bridge was made up of cement-concrete reinforced with steel rods, and represented a popular class of road bridges in which regular health monitoring is a very important issue during the service life. The bridge was instrumented with piezoceramic transducer (PZT) patches, which were electrically excited at high frequencies, of the order of kHz, and the real part of admittance (conductance) was extracted as a function of the exciting frequency. The patches were scanned for the acquisition of this signature at various stages during the loading process. The signatures of the patches located in the vicinity of the damage were found to have undergone drastic changes, while those farther away were less affected. Damage was quantified in non-parametric terms using the root mean square of the deviation in signatures with respect to the baseline signature of the healthy state. This non-parametric index was found to correlate well with the damage progression in the structure.