An experimental investigation on the health monitoring of concrete structures using piezoelectric transducers at various environmental temperatures

The application of piezoelectric transducers in in situ health monitoring of concrete structures has been widely investigated. However, previous experimental studies were normally performed in an isothermal room environment, which offers insufficient considerations for temperature variations that real engineering structures experience in practical monitoring cases. In this article, the temperature effects on smart aggregate–based monitoring results are treated by performing active structural health monitoring on two plain concrete specimens at various temperatures. Experimental results show that the amplitude of the monitoring signal increases with temperature, with low-frequency signals being more sensitive to temperature variation while high-frequency signals less temperature dependent. This research demonstrates the necessity of temperature compensation in smart aggregate–based monitoring techniques.