Abstract
At present, approximately 60% of world's population lives in masonry structures. Some of these structures are found in developing countries experiencing frequent earthquakes. Strong earthquakes tend to collapse these brittle, “non-engineered” structures, causing great harm to humans when these are residential structures. The purpose of this study is to develop simple, low-cost sensor systems using piezoelectric films for structural health monitoring. We aim at applying the monitoring system to failure prediction system to prevent human suffering caused by earthquake-induced building collapses. As evaluation experiment of the sensors, we performed compression failure test of brick masonry specimens which were installed a sensor, and verified the availability of sensors from the test results. Furthermore, we simulated the destruction state of the specimen by finite element analysis. We verified the availability of the sensors by comparing finite element analysis results and the compression test results. Our novel sensors comprise a glass pipe or a metal holder with a glass pipe containing a piezoelectric film. Results of simulation under the same condition as actual test, cracks were visible on an analysis model of the specimen. For this reason, the consistency of the sensors is observed between the actual test using the sensors and the finite element analysis results, therefore, the availability of the sensors is shown.
