Pavement Heath Monitoring by Smart Concrete

Every day, roads and highways are traveled by various cars, without considering the safety or reliability of these structures. Yet much of the transportation infrastructure is outdated, deteriorating and badly in need of repair. Real time damage detection of them is becoming more and more critical,and have special effect on economy and travel safety. The material type of roads can have a significant impact on their performance. Now a day Concrete has become more and more popular in road constructions due to the facts that concrete lasts longer and its environmental friendliness.To develop new technologies for making transportation infrastructure, intelligent, safer, and more cost-effective, researcher work on new systems for self-monitoring the condition of roads quickly and accurately which can sometimes even repair themselves. In this study, smart concrete is discussed.Smart Concrete Paves Way to High-Tech, Cost-Effective Roads. Smarter roads begin with smart pavement. New technologies and materials are helping engineers build roads better and faster while also improving maintenance for longer structural life. The performance of smart structures is due tothe characteristics of the used intelligent materials in them. In this paper special kind of smart materials called as self-sensing concrete is discussed. The piezoresisitive property of additives to concrete enables the composite to detect the stress/stain inside the pavement. Experimental resultsshow that the electrical resistance of the composite changed proportionally to the compressive stress levels. Experimental results demonstrated that the smart concrete function as excellent stress/strain sensors