Crack monitoring capability of plastic optical fibers for concrete structures

Optical fibers have been widely used in structural health monitoring. Traditional silica fibers are easy to break in field applications due to their brittleness. Thus, silica fibers are proposed to be replaced by plastic optical fibers (POFs) in crack monitoring in this study. Moreover, considering the uncertainty of crack propagation direction in composite materials, the influence of the angles between fibers and cracks on the monitoring capability of plastic optical fibers is studied. A POF sensing device was designed and the relationship between light intensity loss and crack width under different fiber/crack angles was first measured through the device. Then, three-point bend tests were conducted on concrete beams. POFs were glued to the bottom surfaces of the beams and light intensity loss with crack width was measured. Experimental results showed that light intensity loss in plastic optical fibers increased with crack width increase. Therefore, application of plastic optical fibers in crack monitoring is feasible. Moreover, the results also showed that the sensitivity of the POF crack sensor decreased with the increase of angles between fibers and cracks.