Smart Cement: Development, Testing, Modeling and Real-time Monitoring

Over three billion metric tons of cement are produced annually worldwide, making concrete the most extensively used construction material. Self-sensing, or smart, cement allows real-time monitoring of performance through the entire service life of a concrete structure, for the detection of changing stresses, contamination, excessive temperature, gas leaks and pre-seismic activity. This is achieved by adding a very small proportion of conductive or semi-conductive fibers, such as carbon fibers to the bulk cement, making it piezoresistive, and enabling changes in the concrete’s electrical resistivity in response to shear stress and strain to be monitored.

This state-of-the-art reference work presents experimental results with a realistic theoretical framework, for cement manufactures, concrete technologists and contractors as well as researchers.

Cumaraswamy Vipulanandan (Vipu) is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering with endowed professorship at the University of Houston, where he is the Director of the Center for Innovative Grouting Materials and Technology and a former department chairman of the Texas Hurricane Center for Innovative Technology. Recently he received two patents on ‘Smart Cement’ and ‘Detection and Quantification of Corrosion on Materials’. He has received several national, state and local awards for his research and teaching.