Curing Management of Early-age Concrete at Construction Site using Integrated Wireless Sensors

Abstract

The quality requirements of concrete have become more stringent in recent times; therefore, the quality control of earlyage concrete has become an extremely important task at construction sites. Among the various factors affecting the quality performance of concrete, its curing temperature and compressive strength were focused upon in this study. A curing temperature management system was developed for in-place concrete that enables direct, real-time measurements and continuous monitoring of the internal temperature of concrete via an all-in-one wireless sensor network (WSN) during the early curing stages. The system can also suggest an informed decision about stripping of the formworks without having to consider the wiring at the construction site. To validate the system, its performance in monitoring curing temperature was investigated and verified by its application in indoor tests and at real construction sites. The compressive strength of concrete was predicted using several functions based on the maturity and the curing temperature. Then, a field experiment was performed to measure the curing temperature of concrete using the developed system. After fresh concrete was poured into the formworks, the WSN signals were measured at a 150-m radius from the field office. The signals were acquired for 28 days without any dispersion or interruption at the construction site. Therefore, it is concluded that the developed system can improve the measurement accuracy of concrete curing temperatures and can also be used at an actual construction site.

A bibliometric review of the status and emerging research trends in construction safety management technologies

“…Temperature sensors have been applied to construction for concrete shrinkage and crack monitoring , concrete curing (Luo et al 2013), and to monitor the temperature of structural components (Ding et al 2014). Lee et al (2014) applied temperature sensors installed in concrete to record the hardening process of concrete to evaluate the compressive strength and quality of the concrete. Bremer et al (2017) applied optical fibre sensors to monitor and evaluate cracks and strains in structures.…”

Extending BIM Interoperability for Real-Time Concrete Formwork Process Monitoring

“…Over the years, studies have tried to implement indirect methods of evaluating the strength performance of concrete, developing sensor-based systems to monitor environmental conditions and identifying the parameters affecting concrete's performance [23,[26][27][28][29][30]. For example, temperature data can be collected while the concrete is forming by using temperature sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags or resistance rigidity thermometers [31].…”

“…The voltage output increases linearly by 10mV with each 10 • C increase in temperature. It has an error of ±0.5 • C at 25 • C. After connecting the LM35 to a micro-analog/digital converter, the voltage outputs can be turned into temperature data with 12-bit resolution [29]. The combination of these three sensors made the proposed system capable of monitoring temperatures ranging between 0 • C and 80 • C while the concrete cured.…”

Applying Sensor-Based Technology to Improve Construction Safety Management

“…Sensors and WSN play an important role in structural health monitoring and have been widely applied to safety management of construction sites. For example, temperature sensors embedded in concrete can record the concrete hardening process in an early phase, which has been used to evaluate the quality, compressive strength and flatness of concrete [ 64 ]; optical fiber sensors embedded in concrete have been applied to monitor the strain and cracks of structures [ 65 ]. In recent years, WSN has been widely utilized in structural health monitoring of bridges [ 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ], dams [ 72 , 73 ] and other important infrastructures concerning people’s life.…”