ABSTRACT
This paper develops a novel approach for damage detection in Asphalt Concrete (AC) pavements using a new class of self-powered Piezo-Floating-Gate (PFG) wireless sensors. The sensor operates using the energy harvested from the host structure via a piezoelectric transducer. The size of a unit is only limited by the size of the transducer and it operates in the nanowatt scale (∼80 nW). Different Finite Element (FE) models are developed to obtain the structural response of the structure. A three-point bending test is performed on an AC beam and damage is defined by making notches with different lengths at the bottom of the specimen. An experimental study is conducted to verify the numerical results. The results indicate that bottom-up cracking in AC pavements can be monitored by interpreting the data generated from the self-powered sensor.
