Condition Evaluation of Bacterial Concrete Structure using EMI Technique for Sustainable Environment

Technological revolution in the construction industry has required a technique to examine the presence of damage in the structures for a sustainable environment reason. Damage in the structures is the cause of catastrophic failure, thus environmentally biodegradable material is required to minimize the developed damage for the protection of structures from such kind of failures. The consideration of bacteria in the concrete infrastructure develops calcite in the presence of water and carbon dioxide through the bio-mineralization process, which reduces the beginning and growth of damages. The electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique can be considered for the condition assessment of the structures using a smart sensor system and thus, the required measures can be applied within a specific time interval. The researchers to date have not done the condition assessment of bacterial concrete structure using a PZT patch-based EMI technique. This research aimed to apply the EMI technique to the bacterial concrete structure for the condition assessment. The bacterial concrete beam specimens were fabricated by the addition of Bacillus subtilis bacteria with a concentration of 108 cells/mL. The electro-mechanical admittance (conductance and susceptance) responses have been extracted using surface-attached PZT sensor and concrete vibration sensor (CVS), respectively. Further, the extracted responses were processed in the MATLAB environment to determine the equivalent structural parameters in a specific frequency band. The change in the equivalent structural parameters from the baseline indicates the existence of damage. It was observed that the evaluation clearly signified the existence of damage, however, lower damage in the bacterial concrete specimen was observed. The developed concept can be used for the condition assessment of real-life structures.