A study on building an experimental system of PVDF sensor for structural local monitoring on a bridge model

Smart material structure originated from aerospace area has been a research hotspot in the application of civil engineering, shipping, and so on. For structural health monitoring of civil engineering, the research about highperformance sensing unit of smart material structure is very important, and this will possibly push further the development of health monitoring and diagnosis technique. As one of the piezoelectric materials belonging to smart materials, PVDF (Polyvinylidene Fluoride) film is widely concerned for its property advantages of low cost, good mechanical ability, high sensibility, resistance of corrosion. In this paper, for the validation of using PVDF for sensing unit for structural local monitoring of civil engineering, an experimental system of PVDF sensor for structural local monitoring on a bridge model is built. Based on the operating mechanism of PVDF, its measure circuit and characteristics(quasi-static and dynamic strain responding) are introduced. A bridge model is designed, and experiments have also been done for structural local health monitoring using PVDF. The experimental results show that, PVDF can finish impact response monitoring and damage detection of a bridge model, and the developed experimental system with simple and easy implement can be used for practical monitoring engineering.