Monitoring of interface separation damage in buckling-restrained steel plate shear walls using piezoelectric based smart aggregates under cyclic loading

Interface debonding damage is a critical issue for many prefabricated concrete components. Various studies have employed different methods to detect debonding behaviors and provided quantitative damage indexes. In this paper, we propose a novel monitoring approach for detecting interface debonding damage in Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) panel-restrained composite steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) using piezoelectric ceramics (PZT). Four SPSWs were designed with different types of concrete, steel plate thicknesses, and bolt arrangements for the cyclic loading experiment. Energy data was collected for time-domain and wavelet packet analysis. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) was then calculated to provide a quantitative damage index for the specimens. The highest damage indices for each specimen were 0.770, 0.963, 0.988, and 1, respectively, which corresponded well with the actual damage scenarios. The experiments verified that using PZT can accurately monitor debonding damage in SPSWs.