The 6th International Workshop on Advanced Smart Materials and Smart Structures Technology ANCRiSST2011 July 25-26, 2011,

Dalian, China

Study on Smart Transparent Concrete Product and Its Performances

Jianping He, Zhi Zhou and Jinping Ou
School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Minghua Huang
School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China

ABSTRACT Building energy saving and safe evaluation for engineering structures have obtained the worldwide attention. It is much of importance for developing a new kind of building material, which can integrate green energy saving with self-sensing properties of functional material. In this paper, based on the excellent properties of light guiding and elasto-optic effect of optical fiber, a novel smart transparent concrete is researched by arranging the optical fibers into the concrete. To evaluate the effectiveness of the smart transparent concrete, the light guiding based on white light test, long-term durability based on freezing and thawing test and chloride ion penetration test, and self-sensing property based on stress elasto-optic effect test are made respectively. The experiments results show that the smart transparent concrete has good transparency, mechanical and self-sensing properties. INTRODUCTION With the economic growth and science-technology development, more and more large-scale civil engineering structures such as tall buildings, underground buildings and landmark buildings and so on are built around the world. While the economic growth is a kind of extensive growth: high input, high consumption and high pollution, for that the energy saving technology is low, especially in developing countries. The brightness of indoor environment is entirely maintained by artificial lighting, which has consumed a large number of resources. Moreover civil engineering structures always suffer from external environmental effects, economic loss and casualties are serious once damaged. And now, building energy saving and building safety have been attracted much attention. Many large span bridges and new landmark buildings have been successfully implemented structural health monitoring systems. Optical fiber sensors such as fiber Bragg Grating, Brillouin distributed sensors and plastic optical fiber sensors have been widely used for the in situ monitoring of major projects (Ou&Zhou,

2003 Anshari, 2007 Wu, 2006; Inaudi, 2005; C. Vzquez et al, 2004 Kalymnios 2005 Kurashima, 1997; Kuang, 2006). Meanwhile some new building materials are developed and used in structures, including self-diagnosis smart concrete, self-tuning smart concrete, self-repairing smart concrete, soundproof concrete, thermal insulation concrete and so on (Ou&Li, 2002-2007; Chung, 1993, 2000; Sun, 2000). All these functional materials only focus on the intelligence characteristics, and cannot possess energy saving. In 2001, the concept of transparent concrete is first put forward by Hungarian architect Aron Losonzi, and the first transparent concrete block is successfully produced by mixing large amount of glass fiber into concrete in 2003, named as LiTraCon. Joel S. and Sergio O.G. developed a transparent concrete material, which can allow 80% light through and only 30% of weight of common concrete. It is worth mentioning that Italian Pavilion in Shanghai Expo 2010 shows a kind of transparent concrete developed by mixing glass into concrete in 2010. While the transparent concrete mainly focuses on "transparent and its application object is art design. And there is no research on mechanics and long-term durability of transparent concrete. Therefore it is imperative to develop a new functional material to satisfy the structure safety monitoring (such as damage detection, fire warning), environmental protection and energy saving and artistic modeling. As two representative materials in construction and sensing field, concrete is one of the most important civil engineering materials with the advantages of rich raw materials, low cost and simple production process. And optical fiber has good light guiding which can arrange the sun light transmit according to pre-design road without light-heat, light-electrical or photochemical process, and photoelastic effect which can be used to study the stress distribution of structures. Combining the advantages of the concrete and optical fiber, developing a novel functional material has important value of application for construction and sensing. In this paper, to integrate the merits of concrete and optical fiber, our group develops a smart transparent concrete by arranging the high numerical aperture POF or big diameter glass optical fiber into concrete. The main purpose is to use sunlight as a light source to reduce the power consumption of illumination and to use the optical fiber to sense the stress of structures. The light guiding, durability and self-sensing properties are studied based on white light test, freezing and thawing test, chloride ion penetration test, and stress elasto-optic effect test respectively. 1. FABRICATION OF SMART TRANSPARENT CONCRETE The main idea of the smart transparent concrete is that high numerical aperture optical fibers are directly arranged in the concrete, and the optical fiber is used as sensing element and optical transmission element. Because that the light can transmit in the optical fiber, different shape of smart transparent concretes can be fabricated and a certain amount of optical fibers are regularly distributed in the concrete shown as figure 1. Plastic optical fiber is an excellent media to transmit light at specific wavelengths which has been widely used in illuminating facility or architectural appearance lighting. In this paper, the transparent concrete is made of concrete and POFs. The fabrication process of standard transparent concrete block can be described as follows. First, according to the volume ratio of concrete and POF, some holes with orthogonal arrays are drilled in the
plastic sheet. Second, POFs are through the holes of two plastic sheets which are fixed on the slots of wood formwork shown as figure 2. Last, a certain concrete is poured in the formwork and fully vibrated on the shaking table. Figure 3 shows the product of transparent concrete, which has good light transmittance from the transparent demonstration experiment.

Fig.1 Configuration of smart transparent concrete

Fig.2 Fabrication of smart transparent concrete

Fig.3 Transparent demonstration of smart transparent concrete 2. EXPERIMENTS OF SMART TRANSPARENT CONCRETE 2.1Light Guiding Property of Smart Transparent Concrete 2.1.1 Evaluation Method of Light Guiding of Smart Transparent Concrete There are many performance indicators to be considered whether the transparency of material is good or not, such as transmittance, haze, refractive index, birefringence and dispersion and so on. In this paper, the transmittance is used to appraisal the light guiding of smart transparent concrete. For the homogeneous materials such as homogeneous glass or LiTraCon above mentioned, their transmittance can be directly calculated by the ratio of the incident energy and transmission energy of light expressed as following equation:

J1 100% J0

(1)

Where , , J1 and J 0 are transmittance, correction coefficient of measurement equipment, transmission energy and incident energy, respectively. While the smart transparent concrete developed by our group is heterogeneous, its transmittance cannot be obtained by equation (1), because the number of POFs in unit area is different at different area, that is, the transmittance in unit is related to the arrangement of POF in smart transparent concrete. We improve the calculation method for transmittance as follows.

a) Incident light energy per unit area 0

0 =

W0 A0

(2)

Where W0 and A0 are light energy of incident probe and area of incident probe.
s : b) Incident total energy of concrete section at the side of light J 0

J 0s = 0 A1 =

W0 A1 A0

(3)

Where A1 is the cross-section area of smart transparent concrete. c) Transmitted light energy of single POF 1 :

1 =

W1 n1

(4)

Where W1 and n1 are light energy of transmission probe and the number of POFs covered by transmission probe. d) Transmitted light energy of smart transparent concrete J1s :

J1s = N 1 = N

W1 n1

(5)

Here N is the total number of POFs in the smart transparent concrete. Then based on equation (3) and (5), we can obtain the transmittance ( s ) of the smart transparent concrete.

s =

N W1 A0 J 100% = 100% = 100% W J W0 A1 n1 0 A1 A0

s 1 s 0

W1 n1

(6)

2.1.2 Light Guiding Experiment of Smart Transparent Concrete In order to study the light guiding property of smart transparent concrete, we fabricate six kinds of smart transparent concretes with different POF volume ratios of 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% and 6%, and the diameters of POF is 2mm. The transmittance is measured by the Newport 835 Optical Power Meter made in USA shown as figure 4, and its wavelength range is 400-1100nm. The incandescent lamp with 200W and halogen lamp with 500W are chosen to provide light. To eliminate the measuring dispersion of transmittance caused by the discrepancy of POFs position and the material, three areas (denoted as 1, 2 and 3) in the middle part of transparent concrete are chosen to test shown as figure 5, and the

number of POFs in each chosen area shall be equal. The number of the POFs is covered by transmission probe or integral sphere are 2 for 1% POF volume ratio, 4 for 2% POF volume ratio, 5 for 3% POF volume ratio, 7 for 4% POF volume ratio, 3 for 5% POF volume ratio and 9 for 6% POF volume ratio respectively. The adjustment of step of the Newport 835 Optical Power Meter is 20nm, and the incident light energy and transmission light energy are read simultaneously at each step.

Fig. 4 Newport 835 Optical Power Meter

Fig.5 Measuring area of the concrete in the Light Guiding Experiment

2.2 Self-sensing Property of Smart Transparent Concrete based on stress elasto-optic effect Glass fiber is a kind of photoelastic material, which is isotropic under normal circumstances. Once be applied load, glass fiber becomes anisotropic, and light birefringence phenomena in it is generated. Commonly, if the optical constants and thickness of glass fiber, the isochromatics and isoclinics are known, the stress state of the glass fiber can be obtained based on the shear difference method. Based on this phenomenon, glass fiber is layout into the smart transparent concrete to monitor the stress state of structures, and the glass fiber can be considered as a sensing element and an optical transmission material. In order to study the self-sensing property of smart transparent concrete, we simultaneously layout a glass fiber with 15mm diameter and numbers of POFs into the concrete with the size of 100mm 100mm 100mm . In the test, the isochromatics and the isoclinics of the samples are gotten by using the plane polarized light and circularly polarized light equipments respectively. Figure 6 shows the experimental setup including a glass fiber or a smart transparent concrete, a loading device and a photoelasticity experimental equipment. The circularly polarized optical field is obtained by adding two 1/4 wave plates in the plane polarized optical field. The strain applied on the samples is recorded by the strain gauge pressure transducer.

Fig.6 Configuration of experimental setup 2.2.1 Test of glass fibers stress elasto-optic effect According to the measuring resolution and accuracy of MGD-1diffusion photo elasticity instrument produced by Shanghai 771 Institute in China, glass fiber with 15mm diameter is chosen to

test its elasto-optic property under radial stress. Before test, the cross-section of glass fiber is polished to ensure the surface smooth. Under the plane polarized optical field, the glass fiber is applied radial load of 0.4kN and 0.8kN respectively. Keeping the polarizer and the analyzer mirror orthogonal, the series of isoclinics of glass fiber at 0-90 degree with the step of 10 degree are obtained by synchronously rotation of the corresponding orthogonal polarization axis. To separate the isochromatics from the color coupled photoelastic patterns, the series of isochromatics of fiber glass are obtained under the circularly polarized optical field, where the glass fiber is applied 0.2-1.6kN with step of 0.2kN. 2.2.2 Test of self-sensing property of smart transparent concrete based on stress elasto-optic effect Figure 7a shows the smart transparent concrete with size of 100mm100mm100mm by combining with glass fiber and POFs. The diameters of glass fiber and POF are 15mm and 2mm respectively. The glass fiber is considered as a stress sensing element in the concrete. Like the test described in the 3.2.1, the isochromatics and the isoclinics of the glass fiber are monitored under plane/ circularly polarized optical field, which can reflect the stress state of the concrete. In order to test the self-sensing properties of the smart transparent concrete, the elasto-optic effect of the transparent concrete under different damage modes are studied. Figure 7b shows the damage modes of concrete, where a crack with size of 0.5mm is produced. Figure 8 gives three loading modes: a) un-damage mode (I); b) longitudinal damage mode (II); c) lateral damage mode (III). The longitudinal damage mode is that the crack is parallel to the loading direction, and the lateral damage mode is that the crack is vertical to the loading direction.

Fig.7 Non-damage and damage samples of smart transparent concrete with glass fiber

Fig.8 Three loading modes for smart transparent concrete 2.3 Durability Property of Smart Transparent Concrete Civil engineering structures always suffer from external environmental effects, such as fatigue, corrosion and wind load and so on, in long-term service. Mechanical property and anti-corrosion property of building material at adverse environments are two key facts for the durability of in-service structures, which directly impact the safety of structures.

2.3.1 Mechanical Property of Smart Transparent Concrete in Frozen Process Experiment To study the mechanical properties of smart transparent concrete with different POF volume ratio under mal-condition, the frozen process experiment is done in the lab. The experimental process can be shown as in figure 9. In this paper, the POF volume ratios of smart transparent concretes chosen for test are 0% (or plain concrete), 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% and 6%. After 25 freeze-thaw cycle test, the mechanical properties of smart transparent concrete are evaluated by the compressive strength loss rate ( f ), expressed as follow.

f =

f co f cn 100 f co

(7)

Where f co and f cn are compressive strength before and after freeze-thawing test.

Fig.9 Procedure of Mechanical properties test after freeze-thawing

Fig.10 Configuration of compression tests 2.3.2 Impermeability Property of Smart Transparent Concrete For the smart transparent concrete, the interfacial bonding of the POFs and concrete is a crucial factor in determining ultimate impermeability properties. The chloride diffusion coefficient method (or electric flux method) is used to test the impermeability property of smart transparent concrete, which can rapidly evaluate the permeability of concrete by measuring the electric energy through concrete. In this paper, the smart transparent concretes with 0%, 3% and 6% POF volume ratio are chosen for the test. The electric energy is recorded by the electric flux detector NJW-RCP-6A made in China, and cylindrical concrete specimens with 100mm diameter and 50mm height are fabricated from the prefabricated smart transparent concretes by core-drilling method, shown as figure 11. Moreover, in order to evaluate the effect of interface bonding on the impermeability property, each model of specimen has been divided two types. One is that the border of POF and concrete is covered by epoxy resin, the other one is not covered by epoxy resin, as shown in figure 11. Figure 12 shows the test

configuration. The process of permeability test based on the electric flux method can be described in figure 13.

Fig.11 Cylindrical concrete specimens for impermeability

Fig.12 Setup of test

Fig.13 Procedure of chloride diffusion coefficient test 3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS 3.1 Experimental Results of Light Guiding Property

b) Relationship of POF volume ration and transmittance Fig.14 Light guiding test by halogen lamp Figure 14 and figure 15 show the light guiding property of smart transparent concrete with the POF volume ratio of 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% and 6% by using the halogen lamp and incandescent lamp, respectively. It can be seen that the transmittance of each type of smart transparent concrete almost keeps stable at whole wavelength of the Newport 835 Optical Power Meter, and the linear relationship between the POF volume ratio and its transmittance is good. For the halogen lamp, the transmittances of the six ratio smart transparent concrete are 0.29%0.59%0.98%1.41%1.83% and 2.36%; for the incandescent lamp, the corresponding transmittances are 0.41%0.82%1.22%1.72%2.15% and 2.59%, respectively. The discrepancy of transmittance induced by different lamp is that the light scatterings angle of the chosen lamp is different, and the POFs absorb much light scattered by incandescent lamp than that by halogen lamp.

a) Transmittance

b) Relationship of POF volume ration and transmittance Fig.15 Light guiding test by incandescent lamp Furthermore, it is worthily of note that the large the POF volume ratio is, the large the transmittance is. In fact, the POF volume ratio and the corresponding transmittance are just like a sword with both edges. We cannot only pay attention to the high transmittance, for the POF inevitable affects the concrete strength. In the following experimental results, it can be seen that POF will reduce the concrete strength. 3.2 Experimental Results of Self-sensing Property 3.2.1 Photoelastic Effect of Large Diameter Glass Fiber Figure 16 shows the results of phtoelastic effect of glass fiber applied radial load of 0.4kN under plane polarized optical field. Both the isochromatics and the isoclinics are figured out in the figure. The isoclinics, described as black lines in the figure, are changed along with the angle of the rotation of the corresponding orthogonal polarization axis, while the isochromatics remain unchanged at the same load. The isoclinics denote the direction of principle stress of the glass fiber, and the isochromatics are the difference.

a) Transmittance

Fig.16 Photoelastic effect of glass fiber u nder plane polarized optical field

Fig.17 Isochromatics of glass fiber at diff erent level load

Figure 17 shows the isochromatics at different load by adding two 1/4 wave plates in the plane polarized optical field. It can be seen that the isochromatics are changed with loading change, which hints that the isochromatics of glass fiber are sensitive to the external load. In photoelasticity experiment, it is difficult to measure the series of isochromatic precisely due to various factors such as the accuracy or resolution of the measuring equipment. From the tests results, it can be seen that the

glass fiber has a good photoelastic effect which is sensitive to the external force applied on it. 3.2.2 Impermeability Property of Smart Transparent Concrete Figure 18 show the results of phtoelastic effect of smart transparent concrete at three conditions above mentioned under the plane polarized optical field. It can be seen that the isochromatics of glass fiber at the three conditions are different from each other at the same load due to the damage and different loading conditions. Comparison with that of the undamaged concrete, the isochromatics of glass fiber changes larger at III condition than that at II condition.

b) Phtoelastic fringe at different level load Fig.18 Phtoelastic fringe of glass fiber under plane polarized optical field Figure 19 shows Phtoelastic fringe of glass fiber at different angle under plane polarized optical field, where the concrete is applied 12kN load which is vertical to the crack. Figure 20 illustrates the series of isochromatics of glass fiber at 2.5-15kN with the step of 2.5kN under the circularly polarized optical field. It is obviously seen that the stress state of concrete with damage is more complicate than that with non-damage from figure 18 and figure 19. Based on the phtoelastic fringe or stress state of glass fiber in the concrete, the stress state of corresponding concrete can be figured out.
a) Phtoelastic fringe at different angle with 12kN

Fig.19 Phtoelastic fringe of glass fiber at different angle

Fig.20 The series of isochromatics of glass fiber at different level load

3.3 Experimental Results of Durability of Smart Transparent Concrete 3.3.1 Mechanical Property of Smart Transparent Concrete at Freeze-thaw From figure 21, it can be seen that the mass of smart transparent concretes almost are unchanged in 25times freezing and thawing cycle and the maximum loss rate of mass is about 0.4%. Figure 22 shows the compressive strengthen of smart transparent concretes with freeze-thaw or not. It can be seen that the compressive strength of each type of smart transparent concrete have greatly decreased after 25times freeze-thaw cycle, and the maximum loss rate of compressive strength is about 42% comparison with that without bearing the function of freeze-thaw for the same type of concrete. It can be seen that the larger the POF volume ratio is, the smaller the compressive strengthen of the smart transparent concrete is. So we cannot endless increase the transmittance by way of increasing the POF volume ratio. One point to be mention, the compressive strengthen of the plain concrete (or the smart transparent concrete with 0% POF volume ratio) is smaller than that of the accustomed plain concrete. The reason is that we consider the fabrication method of the smart transparent concrete and ignore the normal mix proportion of cement mortar at pretest. To improve the compressive strength of the smart transparent concrete, one solution is that the smart transparent concrete can be produced by some special high strength concrete, which can reduce the impact of the POF to the concretes compressive strength.

Fig.21 Loss rate of concrete mass at each time of freeze-thawing

Fig.22 Compressive strengthen of smart transparent concretes with freeze-thaw or not

3.3.2 Impermeability Property of Smart Transparent Concrete Figure 23 shows the relationship of current strength over time. After the vacuum water saturation, the initial current strength of the plain concrete, the smart transparent concrete with 3% POF volume ratio, the smart transparent concrete with 3% POF volume ratio and POF covered by epoxy resin, the smart transparent concrete with 6% POF volume ratio and the smart transparent concrete with 6% POF volume ratio and POF covered by epoxy resin are 70.4mA, 104.5mA, 79mA, 117mA and 114.9mA, respectively. After six hours conduction time, the corresponding current strengths of the above six concretes increase to 113.6mA, 181.7mA, 126.4mA, 201.6mA and 1944.2mA, respectively.

Fig.23 the relationship of current strength Fig.24 Comparison of total electric energy over time traversing the smart concrete The total electric energy of the plain concrete, the smart transparent concrete with 3% POF volume ratio and that with 6% POF volume ratio are 1897.8C, 3152.6C and 3602.2C, that is, there are some minor gaps between the POFs and concrete which cause the decrease of the anti-permeability shown in figure 24. It also can be seen that the anti-permeability is greatly improved by using the epoxy resin to cover the boundary of the POFs and concrete, and the total electric energy of the smart transparent concrete with 3% and 6% POF volume ratio covered by epoxy resin are reduced to 2147C and 3357.8C. In field application, the anti-permeability index of smart transparent concrete is very important for the long-term service. We can improve the anti-permeability by two methods: one is to seal the boundary of POFs and concrete with transparent waterproof material such as epoxy resin; the other one is to make the POFs coating rough to increase the compactness of interface between the POF and concrete. 4. CONCLUSION A novel construction material named smart transparent concrete was developed using POF and glass fiber with large diameter, in which the POF is used as light transmission element and glass fiber is a sensing element to monitor the stress state of structures, and could be regarded as an art material to be used in museums and specific exhibitions. Based on the test of transmission, self-sensing and durability of the smart concrete, the following results have been gotten: 1) The smart transparent concrete has good light guiding property, and the POF volume ratio to concrete is proportion to transmission. 2) The stress birefringence property of glass fiber make itself a good sensing element to measure the inner stress of smart transparent concrete. Comparison to the three experimental conditions, it can be seen that the stress state of glass fiber can reflect the stress state of concrete, which make the self-sensing property. 3) The amount of POFs has seriously influenced the compressive strength of the corresponding concrete. The much number the POFs are, the smaller the compressive strength is. So the transmissions can not endless increase by way of endless increasing the number of POFs in concrete. Furthermore, the POFs have also reduced the anti-permeability of the concrete. Using the epoxy resin to seal the boundary of POFs and concrete, the smart transparent concretes anti-permeability can be greatly improved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors are grateful for the financial supported from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant Nos.10672048, 50538020 and 50978079, National Scientific Support

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