Study of Behavior of RCC Beams Using Optical Sensors and Strenghtening Them with GFRP

Abstract

The new advancements in technology lead to discovery of new things which are then tried and tested for replacing the older ones. Though optical fiber is not new to the world but its fruitful use in telecom industry attracted the researchers to use it in various other fields whether it may be bio-medical or civil. In civil the use of softwares and data acquisition devices has helped the civil engineers to monitor the health of the structures continuously. Though various techniques have evolved for each study, ‘Fiber Bragg Grating’ based fiber optical sensors have come up as a new area of interest. Their small size, flexibility, embeddablity make them the perfect candidate to be used in the health monitoring studies. The main aim for doing health monitoring studies is to keep an eye on the heath of the structure by monitoring various parameters such that any kind of anomaly could be detected and rectified before it affects the structure. In this study the flexure behavior of beams is studied by firstly pre-damaging them upto a certain load and then strengthening them with the help of glass fiber reinforced polymer. After strengthening, the beams were tested and various deductions were made by doing the vibration monitoring and four–point bending flexure test on the beams. In the first chapter of this report basic introduction of SHM, FOS has been provided followed by a review of literature of past research works in second chapter. The third chapter explains about the material properties, casting of specimens, test setups, and the sensors used. Finally, in the last chapter the results obtained from different tests have been discussed and later on conclusions are drawn.