Crack detection study for hydraulic concrete using PPP-BOTDA

Effectively monitoring the concrete cracks is an urgent question to be solved in the structural safety monitoring while cracks in hydraulic concrete structures are ubiquitous. In this paper, two experiments are designed based on the measuring principle of Pulse-Pre pump Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (PPP-BOTDA) utilizing Brillouin optical fiber sensor to monitor concrete cracks. More specifically, \"V\" shaped optical fiber sensor is proposed to determine the position of the initial crack and the experiment illustrates that the concrete crack position can be located by the mutation position of optical fiber strain. Further, Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and preinstall cracks are set at different angles and loads until the optical fiber is fractured. Through the monitoring data, it can be concluded that the variation law of optical fiber strain can basically reflect the propagation trend of the cracks in hydraulic concrete structures.