Damage detection in pavement structures using self-powered sensors

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach for the continuous health monitoring of asphalt concrete pavements using self-powered wireless sensors. Numerical and experimental studies were carried out to evaluate the damage detection performance of the proposed self-sustained sensing system. A three-dimensional finite element analysis was performed to obtain the pavement responses under moving tire loading. Damage was introduced as bottom-up fatigue cracks at the bottom of the asphalt layer. Thereafter, features extracted from the simulated dynamic strain data for a number of sensing nodes were used to detect damage. Laboratory tests were carried out on an asphalt concrete specimen in three point bending mode to verify the sensor response. The results indicate that the proposed method is effective in detecting different damage states including crack propagation.