Crack detection of a full-scale reinforced concrete girder with a distributed cable sensor

A new concept of designing cable sensors for health monitoring of large-scale civil infrastructure has recently been proposed by the present authors. The concept was developed based on the change in topology of the outer conductor of a coaxial cable sensor. One such sensor was fabricated with its outer conductor tightly wrapped with a commercial tin-plated steel spiral that was covered with solder. It was mounted near the surface of a 15 m long reinforced concrete (RC) girder with a 762 mm square hollow cross section and 152 mm thick walls. The girder was tested under a progressively increasing cyclic torsion creating 45° inclined cracks around and along the girder. The main objectives of this study were to implement the distributed cable sensor technology in large-scale reinforced concrete structures, to understand the performance of a sensor under cyclic loading for detecting and locating cracks, and, finally, to address implementation issues such as signal loss, non-uniformity in sensor construction, and recoverability.