A novel life prediction model based on monitoring electrical properties of self-sensing cement-based materials

Assessing the damage level in concrete infrastructures over time is a critical issue to plan their timely maintenance with proper actions. Self-sensing concretes offer new opportunities for damage assessment by monitoring their electrical properties and relating their variations to damage levels. In this research, fatigue tests were conducted to study the response of a self-sensing concrete under high-cycle dynamic loading. The concept of G-value was defined as the slope of the voltage response baseline of the self-sensing concrete over time that reflects the damage created under the fatigue-loading test. Based on this definition, log (G)–log (N) curves were obtained using a linear regression approach, with N representing the number of cycles during the fatigue tests. While traditional fatigue curves S-log (N) are used to estimate the remaining life under fatigue loading, log (G)–log (N) diagrams can be used to determine the damage level based on the voltage response of the self-sensing concrete as a function of the loading history. This finding can be useful for the estimation of the lifetime and remaining life of self-sensing concrete structures and infrastructure, eventually helping to optimize the related maintenance operations.