Smart textiles for SHM of geostructures and buildings

Distributed fiber optic technology offers the capability to measure strain and deformation at thousands of points along a single fiber up to tens of kilometers. This is of particular interest for the monitoring in the geotechnical structures where it allows the detection and localization of ground movements. Fiber optic sensing system offers ability to detect and localize deformation induced by geological assessments, allowing the monitoring of kilometers with a single instrument and localization of the event with a precision better than 1 meter. Geo-textile structures are already well known in the field of geotechnical engineering. Beside reinforcing capability geo-textile can be equipped with monitoring system. Such an intelligent structure can provide both reinforcement and monitoring capabilities for geotechnical application and civil engineering. In order to get knowledge on the behavior of different typology of optical sensors integrated in geo-textile structures and embedded in soil exposed to local settlement, and to get knowledge on the interaction between optical sensor and geo-textile structures series of full scale tests were performed in laboratory under controlled conditions. The tests demonstrate that is possible to reliably localize the position of the settlements, from 2 up to 140 mm, within few minutes and with a spatial accuracy better than 1 meter. Moreover it is reliably possible to follow the evolution of settlement and analyze it qualitatively. The above mentioned test and presented in this publication were carried out in the POLYTECT project (Polyfunctional Technical Textiles against Natural Hazards), financially supported by the European Commission within the 6^th framework program.