appear obvious variation

with increasing the freezing-thawing cycles in all the frequency

intervals. The resistance values increase significantly with
increasing the freezing-thawing cycles, and the peak values shift
towards the decreasing frequency direction. This indicates that
the freezing-thawing damage causes the stiffness change of the
concrete, and thus the electric impedance of the coupled PZT
sensors varies correspondingly.
The root mean square deviation (RMSD) of resistance in different
frequency intervals was chosen as damage metric to evaluate
the freezing-thawing damage of concrete structure (see Fig. 7).
RMSD
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiff
iffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
X
n
i1
jRij # jR0i
j#2
X
n
i1
jR0i
j#2
vuuut
1
where, |Ri| is resistance of PZT sensor in different frequency intervals
during freezing-thawing cycles. |Ri0| is the baseline resistance
of PZT sensor before freezing-thawing testing. n is the testing frequency
points in different frequency intervals.
It can be found that the RMSD index in different frequency
intervals shows great difference, however, it increases obviously
with increasing the freezing-thawing cycles. This indicates that
the RMSD index can effectively reflect the structural variation of
concrete due to the freezing-thawing damage. Additionally, it also
can be observed that the variation of RMSD index in 100150 kHz
is more obvious than that in other frequency intervals with
increasing the freezing-thawing cycles, namely, the resistance vs.
Fig. 3. The concrete blocks after (a) 25; and (b) 50 cycles of freezing and
thawing.
Fig. 4. Layout of PZT sensors in the concrete beam.
100 110 120 130 140 150
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
Frequency(kHz)
Resistance(ohm)
(a)100-150kHz
150 160 170 180 190 200
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
(b)150-200kHz
Frequency(kHz)
Resistance(ohm)
baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
200 210 220 230 240 250
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
(c)200-250kHz
Resistance(ohm)
Frequency(kHz)
baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
250 260 270 280 290 300
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260
280
(d)250-300kHz baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
Resistance(ohm) Frequency(kHz)
300 320 340 360 380 400
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
(e)300-400kHz
Resistance(ohm)
Frequency(kHz)
baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
400 420 440 460 480 500
80
100
120
140
160
180
(f)400-500kHz baseline
25 cylces
50 cylces
Resistance(ohm)
Frequency(kHz)
Fig. 5. Resistance curves of 1# PZT sensor under freezing-thawing cycles.
452 P. Liu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 136 (2017) 450455
frequency spectra at relatively low frequency show the best monitoring
sensitivity of freezing-thawing damage.
3.2. Crack damage analysis of concrete
Figs. 8 and 9 show the resistance vs. frequency spectra of the
PZT sensors in two groups of crack damage specimens at different
frequency intervals, respectively. Comparing with resistance
curves of the freezing-thawing damage, the variation of resistance
curves caused by crack damage of concrete is not obvious. However,
it still can be observed