ABSTRACT
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is the process of automating condition assessment of structures by observing and interpreting their in-service responses. Despite the wide variety of sensors and signal processing tools that have been proposed in years for SHM of civil infrastructures, most SHM applications are either at a numerical or laboratory proof-of-concept stage. One of the possible monitoring applications of soft elastomeric capacitors (SEC) networks is condition assessment of mesosystems. The sensing method can be used to extract physics-based features from the signal to provide insights on structural performance. The signal of the SEC was compared against a second SEC located externally to amplify the change in signal. The nanocomposite constituting the SEC was developed for large scale applications. A popular choice in SHM application is to fabricate resistive strain sensors using carbon nanotubes due to their high mechanical strength and excellent electrical properties.
