Strain Sharing Assessment in Woven Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

Roberto Montanini; Antonino Recupero; Fabrizio De Domenico; Fabrizio Freni

doi:10.3390/s16101564

Strain Sharing Assessment in Woven Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

Sensors (Basel). 2016 Sep 22;16(10):1564. doi: 10.3390/s16101564.

Authors

Roberto Montanini¹, Antonino Recupero², Fabrizio De Domenico³, Fabrizio Freni⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Contrada di Dio, Messina I-98166, Italy. rmontanini@unime.it.
² Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Contrada di Dio, Messina I-98166, Italy. arecupero@unime.it.
³ Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Contrada di Dio, Messina I-98166, Italy. ingfdd@aliceposta.it.
⁴ Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Contrada di Dio, Messina I-98166, Italy. fabfreni@hotmail.com.

Abstract

Embedded fiber Bragg grating sensors have been extensively used worldwide for health monitoring of smart structures. In civil engineering, they provide a powerful method for monitoring the performance of composite reinforcements used for concrete structure rehabilitation and retrofitting. This paper discusses the problem of investigating the strain transfer mechanism in composite strengthened concrete beams subjected to three-point bending tests. Fiber Bragg grating sensors were embedded both in the concrete tensioned surface and in the woven fiber reinforcement. It has been shown that, if interface decoupling occurs, strain in the concrete can be up to 3.8 times higher than that developed in the reinforcement. A zero friction slipping model was developed which fitted very well the experimental data.

Keywords: Fiber Bragg grating sensor; embedded optical fiber sensor; fiber reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM); rehabilitation and retrofitting; strain measurements; strain transfer mechanism; strengthened concrete structures.