Smart Graphite Cementitious Composites forWeigh-in-Motion and Monitoring of Bridges

The development of multifunctional cementitious materials is having a great application impact in civil and industrial engineering. The authors have recently developed carbon-added cement-based composites able to integrate both structural and monitoring capabilities. Graphite powder dispersed into the cement matrix in different percentages is under specific investigation in this paper in order to achieve load sensitivity. This filler has been adopted for its scalable application potential, given its relatively low-cost and mixing easiness. Possible applications are in monitoring of infrastructures that require distributed sensing strategies for an effective health assessment during their service life. Note that traditional transducers have several drawbacks due to critical application procedures, durability, maintenance troubles, and high costs, while the proposed composites could be embedded into the road pavement or its substrates and constitute part of the construction itself. This paper presents the results of an experimental campaign of various small- and medium-scale samples and numerical modelling approaches to simulate real applications on roads and bridges. Overall, the paper contributes to demonstrating the effectiveness of these new materials for traffic and weigh-in-motion monitoring.