20 years of experience with structural health monitoring of objects with CFRP components

Abstract

The application of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) in bridge construction was before 1991 unknown. Therefore the bridge owners did not want to rely only on the laboratory experiments made in the 1980ties. They asked for structural health monitoring. This was also in the interest of the involved R&D community. The used devices range from "old fashioned" demec gauges for off-line measurements to classical foil resistance strain gauges, self-sensing systems for unidirectional CFRP wires, and also sophisticated integrated fiber optical sensors with Bragg gratings. In the most important applications different independent systems were used in parallel. Twenty years are for devices which are exposed to outdoor weathering a fairly demanding time span. Therefore the surprisingly high reliability of most of these systems is a largely appreciated result. Applications on post-tensioned reinforced concrete bridges, stay cables, and pretensioned powerline pylons will be discussed. © RILEM 2013.