Development of some Smart Sensors for Monitoring Civil Infrastructures

In this paper, some smart sensors or material used to make the smart sensors, such as piezoresistance composite, piezoelectric polymer, piezoelectric cement and corrosion monitoring sensor, developed by Harbin Institute of Technology were introduced. Piezoresistance composite is made with carbon nanotube and resin, one character of the work is the carbon nanotube is orientation arranged by magnetic field. Piezoelectric polymer is made with PZT particles and PVDF, in order to improve its performance a few carbon nanotube are also mixed in the composite. Piezoelectric cement is one kind of sensing material whose primary raw materials are cement and piezoelectric ceramic particles (or fiber). The sensing performance of piezoelectric cement is coming from its functional phase, the piezoelectric ceramic. The corrosion monitoring sensor is made with solid-state reference electrode, whose surface is one kind of binary alloy membrane produced with physical vapor deposition technology. The main producing technology, performance and applications of above sensors were introduced in this paper.