Abstract
Currently, about 60% people of the whole world are living in masonry structured residences. These areas partially belong to developing countries with frequently occurred earthquakes. There are numerous brittleness buildings as non-engineered structures in the countries. Therefore, buildings were collapsed when an earthquake occurred, with continuous human damage occurs. The purpose of this study is developing simple and low cost health monitoring sensor system, using a piezoelectric film. Our failure prediction system aimed at avoiding human suffering caused by buildings collapse at an earthquake. Our novel sensors comprise a glass pipe that ware directly installed in brick masonry specimens or a holder with a glass pipe containing piezoelectric film elements for measuring signals during static loading tests. For this purpose, brick masonry specimens were subjected to compression test to evaluate their mechanical properties and to investigate proposed sensor response. The comparison results of measurements with piezoelectric limit sensors show that sensors responded before and during broken of brick masonry specimens. We regard the applicability of new piezoelectric limit sensor to detect premonitory failure obtained using the static loading test.
