HPSA: a high-performance smart aggregate for concrete structural health monitoring based on acoustic impedance matching method

Abstract Piezoceramic-based ultrasonic transducers have demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of functioning as smart aggregates (SAs) to detect damages for concrete structures in laboratory-sized structural members. The restriction of its further engineering application is the limited propagation distance due to the large energy loss during wave transmission. Aiming to reduce the energy loss of piezoceramic-based sensors, the authors proposed a high-performance piezoceramic-enabled SA based on acoustic impedance matching principle. The main contribution to the performance enhancement comes from the proposed surface treatment of the lead zirconate titanate patch and acoustic impedance matching layer. Comparative experiments with commercial SAs validate the improved performance. Besides, a field test with different wave propagation distances fully illustrates the perspective of the proposed superior transducer in large infrastructure engineering applications.