Innovative Structural Health Monitoring of reinforced concrete piles using distributed fibre optic sensing

Loizos Pelecanos, Kenichi Soga

Research output: Chapter or section in a book/report/conference proceedingChapter in a published conference proceeding

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Abstract

Thousands of piles are built every year in the world and their construction has become an integral part of a building"s design and construction. Although so many piles are being built, contractors still find piles that are damaged or their as-built condition is significantly different than the initial design. Pile damage or any compromise in the strength, stiffness or geometry may be detrimental for the structural stability and safety of the superstructure. It is therefore crucial to implement procedures for inspecting and quality-controlling foundation piles, so that their "true" capacity can be reliably estimated. Part of this quality control should be a comprehensive set of reliable detailed instrumentation that can reveal the state of constructed foundation piles. Distributed fibre-optic strain sensing using BOTDR or BOTDA is a novel instrumentation technique that offers a spatially-continuous data. An optical fibre cable is installed along the depth of the pile which serves as a sensor itself, as it provides distributed strain data every 5-10cm along the cable length. This is superior to more conventional discrete point-based sensors which provided limited monitoring information at pre-specified location points. The availability of a distributed strain regime offers a number of advantages when it comes to studying soil-structure interaction problems such as foundation piles. This paper describes the use of distributed fibre-optic sensing in monitoring foundation piles and presents two recent case studies in London were abnormalities in the piles were observed. It is shown that spatially-distributed fibre-optics were able to identify the abnormalities, whereas the point vibrating-wire strain-gauge sensors could not. The monitoring data is also complemented by r​e​
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationUKIERI Concrete Congress - Concrete: The Global Builder
Publication statusPublished - 8 Mar 2019
EventUKIERI Concrete Congress - Concrete: The Global Builder - Jalandhar, Punjab, India
Duration: 5 Mar 20198 Mar 2019
https://ukiericoncretecongress.com/ucc2019/

Conference

ConferenceUKIERI Concrete Congress - Concrete: The Global Builder
Period5/03/198/03/19
Internet address

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