Geopolymer-Based Smart Adhesives for Infrastructure Health Monitoring: Concept and Feasibility

Abstract

This paper describes the initial efforts to explore a new application of metakaolin-based geopolymers to structural health monitoring. A distributed geopolymer-fiber optic sensing (G-FOS) system is proposed, where geopolymers are used as smart adhesives to affix optical fibers to existing in-service structures to form an integrated G-FOS sensor. Results of feasibility testing in the laboratory indicated that the tensile cracking strain of geopolymers can be controlled by finely tuning the Si/Al ratios or adding appropriate aggregate fillers such as sand, thus rendering the “smart” nature of geopolymers for deformation-based sensing. Geopolymers with