• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.343-350
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• 2017

An experimental study is presented of the application of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) interrogation method based on optical time-domain reflectometery (OTDR) to monitoring strain in bent reinforced concrete beams. The results obtained with the OTDR-based method are shown to agree well with the direct spectral measurements. Strain sensitivity, resolution and measurement range amounted to $0.0028dB/{\mu}strain$; $30{\mu}strain$; $4000{\mu}strain$, correspondingly. Significant differences are observed in surface and inner deformations of the test beams which can be attributed to different mechanical properties of concrete and steel reinforcement. The prospects of using OTDR-based FBG interrogation technique in real-life applications are discussed.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.595-603
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• 2017

Piezoceramic transducers have been widely used in the health monitoring of civil structures. However, in most cases, they are used as sensors either to measure strain or receive stress waves. This paper proposes a method of using piezoelectric transducers as strain gauges and acoustic emission (AE) sensors simultaneously. The signals received by piezoceramic transducers are decomposed into different frequency components for various analysis purposes. The low-frequency signals are used to measure strain, whereas the high-frequency signals are used as acoustic emission signal associated with local damage. The b-value theory is used to process the AE signal in piezoceramic transducers. The proposed method was applied in the bending failure experiments of two reinforced concrete beams to verify its feasibility. The results showed that the extracted low-frequency signals from the piezoceramic transducers had good agreement with that from the strain gauge, and the processed high-frequency signal from piezoceramic transducers as AE could indicate the local damage to concrete. The experimental results verified the feasibly of structural health monitoring using piezoceramic transducers as strain gauges and AE sensors simultaneously, which can advance their application in civil engineering.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.63-74
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• 2022

The deformation coordination between a rock/soil mass and an optical sensing cable is an important issue for accurate deformation monitoring. A stress-controlled triaxial apparatus was retrofitted by introducing an optical fiber into the soil specimen. High spatial resolution optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) was used for monitoring the strain distribution along the axial direction of the specimen. The results were compared with those measured by a displacement meter. The strain measured by the optical sensing cable has a good linear relationship with the strain calculated by the displacement meter for different confining pressures, which indicates that distributed optical fiber sensing technology is feasible for soil deformation monitoring. The performance of deformation coordination between the sensing cable and the soil during unloading is higher than that during loading based on the strain transfer coefficients. Three hypothetical strain distributions of the triaxial specimen are proposed, based on which theoretical models of the strain transfer coefficients are established. It appears that the parabolic distribution of specimen strain should be more reasonable by comparison. Nevertheless, the strain transfer coefficients obtained by the theoretical models are higher than the measured coefficients. On this basis, a strain transfer model considering slippage at the interface of the sensing cable and the soil is discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.185-197
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• 2013

We developed a simultaneous strain measurement and damage detection technique using a pair of surface-mounted piezoelectric transducers and a fiber connecting them. This is a novel sensor configuration of the fiber acoustic wave (FAW) piezoelectric transducer. In this study, lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) transducers are installed conventionally on a plate's surface, which is a technique used in many structural health monitoring studies. However, our PZTs are also connected with an optical fiber. A FAW and Lamb wave are simultaneously guided in the optical fiber and the structure, respectively. The dependency of the time-of-flight of the FAW on the applied strain is quantified for strain sensing. In our experimental results, the FAW exhibited excellent linear behavior and no hysteresis with respect to the change in strain. On the other hand, the well-known damage detection function of the surface-mounted PZT transducers was still available by monitoring the waveform change in the conventional Lamb wave ultrasonic path.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2009.05b
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• pp.387-392
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• 2009

Measurement of dynamic characteristics are widely used to detect defects in mechanical or civil structures. The most common approach is to measure changes in frequency spectrum or mode shapes using accelerometers. An alternative to using mode shapes is using stain modes. Strain is more sensitive to local defects than displacement, and hence stain modes measurement is an efficient in structural health monitoring. This paper deals with dynamic monitoring of a beam structure using strain sensors. Resistive strain gages and FBG strain gages are used and their characteristics are compared. It has been known that resistive strain gages are week to EMI environment and suffers from noise at high frequency range. It has been shown that the FBG sensor is a good alternative that overcomes such difficulties.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.844-849
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• 2008

We present a novel cell deformability monitoring chip based on the digitally measured cell lysis rate which is dependent on the areal strain of the cell membrane. This method offers simple cell deformability monitoring by automated high-throughput testing system. We suggest the filter design considering the areal strain imposed on the cell membrane passing through the filter array having gradually increased orifice length. In the experiment using erythrocytes, we characterized the cell deformability in terms of average fracture areal strain which was $0.24{\pm}0.014\;and\;0.21{\pm}0.002$ for normal and chemically treated erythrocytes, respectively. We also verified that the areal strain of 0.15 effectively discriminates the deformability difference of normal and chemically treated erythrocytes, which can be applied to the clinical situation. We compared the lysis rates and their difference for the samples from different donors and found that the present chips can be commonly used without any calibration process. The experimental results demonstrate the simple structure and high performance of the present cell deformability monitoring chips, applicable to simple and cost-effective cell aging process monitoring.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.1065-1066
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• 2010

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.669-677
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• 2012

This study presents a method to monitor cable force using wireless sensor nodes and piezoelectric sensors. The following approaches are carried out to achieve the objective. Firstly, the principle of piezoelectric materials (e.g., PZT) as strain sensors is reviewed. A cable force estimation method using dynamic features of cables measured by piezoelectric materials is presented. Secondly, the design of an automated cable force monitoring system using the data acquisition sensor-node Imote2/SHM-DAQ is described. The sensor node is originally developed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is adopted in this study to monitor strain-induced voltage from PZT sensors. The advantages of the system are cheap, and eligible for wireless communication and automated operation. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed monitoring system is evaluated on a lab-scaled cable.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2013.04a
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• pp.830-834
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• 2013

This study presents a method to monitor cable force of a long-span cable-stayed bridge using a smart piezoelectric sensor system. The following approaches are implemented in order to achieve the objective. Firstly, the method to utilize piezoelectric materials for the health monitoring of stay cables is presented. For strain measurement of a stay cable, a PZT-embedded smart skin is designed to overcome the difficulties of bonding PZT sensors directly on stay cables. Secondly, a piezoelectric strain monitoring system for stay cables is designed. For the operation of the sensor board, the Imote2 sensor platform is used to provide the computation, wireless communication and power supply units. The feasibility of the proposed monitoring system is then evaluated on a full-scale cable of a cable-stayed bridge.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.56-65
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• 2003

The hull monitoring systems of container ships with four long-base gages give enough information for identifying the hull girder loads such as bending and torsional moments. But such a load-identification for container ships has not been known. In this paper, a load-identification method is suggested in terms of a linear matrix equation that the measured strain vector equals to the multiplication of the transformation matrix and the desired strain component vector. The equation is proved to be mathematically complete by the property of positive-definite determinant of the transformation matrix. The method is applied to a hull stress monitoring system for 8100TED container ship during sea trial, and the estimated external loads illustrate reasonable results in comparison with the pre-estimated results. This moment decomposition concept has also been tested in real operation conditions. The typical phenomena over the Suez Canal illustrated very suitable results comparing with the physical understandings. Henceforth, one can effectively use the proposed concept to monitor the hull girder loads such as bending and torsional moments.