Detection of post-earthquake damage inside a concrete arch dam using the electromechanical impedance method

The detection of post-earthquake damage inside concrete dams has recently attracted great interest in academia and industry. A novel electromechanical impedance (EMI) method using embedded EMI sensors (EMISs) is proposed in this paper to detect earthquake-induced damage within concrete dams. The basic concept of the proposed EMI method is to use high-frequency excitations to monitor local changes in the monitored dams caused by damage. Based on the effective impedance, a three-dimensional (3D) EMI model for embedded EMISs is proposed. Then, a new damage-sensitive feature factor is derived based on the proposed 3D EMI model. A high arch dam model with embedded EMISs is studied experimentally. Moreover, shaking table tests are conducted on the dam model. The proposed 3D EMI method is used to monitor the evolution of earthquake-induced damage inside the dam model. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed EMI method for detecting earthquake-induced damage in concrete dams.