A large-area strain sensing technology for monitoring

16 This paper presents a novel large-area strain sensing technology for monitoring fatigue cracks in 17 steel bridges. The technology is based on a soft elastomeric capacitor (SEC), which serves as a 18 flexible and large-area strain gauge. Previous experiments have verified the SEC’s capability to 19 monitor low-cycle fatigue cracks experiencing large plastic deformation and large crack opening. 20 Here an investigation into further extending the SEC’s capability for long-term monitoring of 21 fatigue cracks in steel bridges subject to traffic loading, which experience smaller crack openings. 22 It is proposed that the peak-to-peak amplitude (pk-pk amplitude) of the sensor’s capacitance 23 measurement as the indicator of crack growth to achieve robustness against capacitance drift 24 during long-term monitoring. Then a robust crack monitoring algorithm is developed to reliably 25 identify the level of pk-pk amplitudes through frequency analysis, from which a Crack Growth 26 Index (CGI) is obtained for monitoring fatigue crack growth under various loading conditions. To 27 generate representative fatigue cracks in laboratory, loading protocols were designed based on 28 constant ranges of stress intensity to limit plastic deformations at the crack tip. A series of small29 scale fatigue tests were performed under the designed loading protocols with various stress 30 intensity ratios. Test results under the realistic fatigue crack conditions demonstrated the proposed 31 crack monitoring algorithm can generate robust CGIs which are positively correlated with crack 32 lengths and independent from loading conditions. 33 34