Throughout both a three-point bending damage senario, and a compressive loading recovery senario, the Impedance response of mortar samples was collected through surface attached PZT sensors. The impedance response was collected at discrete loading points.
The voltage used to actuate the PZT sensors was 2 V, and the impedance signature was collected in the frequency range of 15 – 350 kHz. 1000 points were collected in each sweep and a PC was used to both control the impedance analyser and to collect the data.
The purpose of this experiment was to demonstrate that both cracking and recovery, healing, can be detected by using the electromechanical impedance method by using surface attached PZT sensors.