Numerical Simulation Of PZT Based Reinforcement Steel Rebar For Concrete Beam Using Transient Ultrasonic Guided Wave

In recent decades, Structural Health Monitor (SHM) for concretestructure using the piezoelectric ceramic material (PZT) is under wideinterests and investigations. Because of the piezoelectric effect and lowcost, PZT is widely used in manufacture of actuators and sensors, whichprovides a new health monitoring technique of concrete structure.Due to the complexity of concrete microstructure and the couplingphenomena of structure and electrical fields, numerical simulation turns tobe a good approach to provide theoretical guidance for study and analysisof such an SHM system. An active sensing diagnostic system forreinforced concrete SHM has been simulated and analyzed withcommercial FEA software in this paper. The major work includes:(1) The characteristics of piezoelectric ceramic material and theconcepts of stress wave are introduced. According to the wave attenuationin propagation, the basic principles of damage detection for the reinforcedconcrete system based on guided wave are explained. Moreover, basicmethods to determine damage position are explored by the example ofreinforced concrete crack damage.(2) The basic processes and coupled field analysis of ANSYS aredescribed. By comparing the advantages and disadvantages of differentmethods, the direct coupling method is selected for analysis. Furthermore,main performance parameters and analysis methods of the finite elementmodel are determined. (3) A finite element model is established on the basis of rebar testattached with PZT and verified by comparing with experimental results.The effect of the ribs on the rebar to output signal is studied by both thefinite element method and analysis method. In addition, the finite elementmodel is optimized to achieve better detection results.(4) The damage tests for reinforced concrete structure attached PZTare introduced and RC finite element models are established, which arebased on the tests of simulating debonding damage. The simulation resultsare compared with experimental data. More information is discussed suchas location of damage.(5) The sector is summarized and concluded the content of this paperand point out the future research directions.