Tenório Filho José Roberto, Abbas Yawar, Oudenhoven Jos, Matthys Stijn
Magnel-Vandepitte Laboratory, Department of Structural Engineering and Building Materials, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Tech Lane Ghent Science Park, Campus A, Technologiepark Zwijnaarde 60, B-9052 Ghent, Belgium.
IMEC at Holst Centre, 5656 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Aug 30;23(17):7525. doi: 10.3390/s23177525.
Concrete is a widely used construction material, demanding strict quality control to maintain its integrity. The durability and lifespan of concrete structures rely heavily, amongst other factors, on the characteristics of fresh and early age concrete, which are strongly dependent on the curing process. To ensure long-term durability, it is crucial to assess concrete properties throughout construction and verify compliance with design specifications. Currently, electrical resistivity-based sensors are available and used for quality control and monitoring, however, these sensors tend to be costly or only measure at a single location within the concrete cover. This study introduces a printed circuit board (PCB)-based array of electrodes capable of measuring concrete resistivity profiles across the concrete cover, from its fresh state to early age development. In this work, the feasibility of such resistivity PCB-sensors, novel for concrete, is evaluated under laboratory conditions. The sensors exhibit a promising performance in monitoring the efficiency of concrete curing under various conditions. Additionally, they successfully evaluate the effectiveness of internal curing (in our study, promoted by superabsorbent polymers) during the initial stages of hardening. This sensor array provides a valuable tool for monitoring the curing of concrete at early age, and showcases a preliminary solution that could be further developed to ensure long-term performance of concrete infrastructure.
混凝土是一种广泛使用的建筑材料，需要严格的质量控制来维持其完整性。混凝土结构的耐久性和使用寿命在很大程度上取决于新拌混凝土和早期混凝土的特性，而这些特性又强烈依赖于养护过程。为确保长期耐久性，在整个施工过程中评估混凝土性能并验证其是否符合设计规范至关重要。目前，基于电阻的传感器可用于质量控制和监测，然而，这些传感器往往成本高昂，或者只能在混凝土保护层内的单个位置进行测量。本研究介绍了一种基于印刷电路板（PCB）的电极阵列，它能够测量从新拌状态到早期发展阶段整个混凝土保护层的混凝土电阻率分布。在这项工作中，在实验室条件下评估了这种对混凝土来说新颖的电阻率PCB传感器的可行性。这些传感器在监测各种条件下混凝土养护效率方面表现出有前景的性能。此外，它们成功地评估了硬化初期内部养护（在我们的研究中，由高吸水性聚合物促进）的有效性。这种传感器阵列提供了一种监测混凝土早期养护的有价值工具，并展示了一种可进一步开发以确保混凝土基础设施长期性能的初步解决方案。
