Nanocomposites for structural health monitoring

Excellent electrical, mechanical, and physical properties of nanomaterials have motivated the development of nanocomposites with outstanding sensing capabilities. The sensing behaviors of nanocomposites subjected to environmental changes have triggered enormous interests in the field of structural health monitoring, especially in stress/strain sensing, damage (e.g., fatigue and crack) monitoring, and traffic detection. However, the problems related to nanomaterial dispersion widely exist in the case of nanocomposites, which could affect the overall properties of the composites. Moreover, much efforts are still demanded for investigating the sensing mechanism to modify the nanocomposites from the “bottom” scale and predict their sensing behaviors in application. This chapter reviews the recent progress of classification, fabrication, sensing mechanism, and application of nanocomposites for structural health monitoring.