Original Article

Structural Health Monitoring

2017, Vol. 16(2) 215224

A functionally layered sensing skin for The Author(s) 2016

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the detection of corrosive elements DOI: 10.1177/1475921716670574
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and cracking

Aku Seppanen1, Milad Hallaji2 and Mohammad Pour-Ghaz2

Abstract
In this paper, we propose an electrical impedance tomography (EIT)-based multifunctional surface sensing system, or sen-
sing skin, for structural health monitoring. More specifically, the EIT-based sensing skin is developed for detecting and
localizing the ingress of chlorides and cracking: two phenomena which are of concern in many structures, including rein-
forced concrete structures. The multifunctional sensing skin is made of two layers: one layer is sensitive to both chlor-
ides and cracking, and the other layer is sensitive to cracking only. In the experiments, the sensing skin is tested on a
polymeric and concrete substrate. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using the multifunctional multi-layer sensing
skin for detecting and localizing corrosive elements and cracking, and for distinguishing between them.

Keywords
Damage detection, electrical impedance tomography (EIT), multi-layer sensing skin, reinforced concrete, cracking,
corrosion

Introduction However, EIT has some practical limitations, caused

The functionality, serviceability and safety of concrete
structures are affected by several factors, which are
therefore of interest in structural health monitoring.
One of the major concerns is usually cracking, because
it is a precursor of large deformation or failure and can
adversely affect the performance and serviceability of
structures. Another threat to a reinforced concrete
structure is caused by the ingress of ions especially
chlorides. The ingress of ions is heavily influenced by
cracking, and may accelerate the corrosion of steel rein-
forcement, leading to the decrease of the service life of
the concrete structure. Rapid detection of cracking and
harmful ions is particularly important in critical struc-
tures, such as nuclear waste storage and containment
facilities.
Among methods developed for detecting cracking in
concrete structures, electrically based methods are
attractive, because they are often rapid and inexpensive.
One of the most advanced electrical methods is electrical
impedance tomography (EIT), in which the distribution
of electrical conductivity inside concrete is imaged based
on measurements from the surface of the structure.
Recent studies have indicated that EIT can detect crack-
ing as well as moisture and ion ingress in concrete.14
especially by a very high impedance between electrodes
and the substrate, if the moisture content of the concrete
is low, decreasing the sensitivity of the surface measure-
ments to the internal conductivity.2 The same problem
also occurs when other electrical methods are used for
monitoring the conductivity of dry concrete.
One approach to overcome the limitations associated
with monitoring the conductivity of the concrete sub-
strate is to use electrically conductive surface-mounted
sensors. Conductive surface sensors are made of electri-
cally conductive materials (e.g. thin metal foils, or cop-
per- or silver-based paints) that are applied to the
surface of the structure. When the concrete substrate is
strained, the sensor is stretched and its electrical resis-
tance increases slightly. If the surface of the substrate
cracks, the sensor ruptures and its resistance increases
1
Department of Applied Physics, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio,
Finland
2
Department of Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering,
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Corresponding author:
Aku Seppanen, University of Eastern Finland, Department of Applied
Physics, P.O.B 1627, FI-70211, Kuopio, Finland.
Email: Aku.Seppanen@uef.fi
216
by orders of magnitude. By monitoring the resistance of
the sensor, cracking of the substrate can therefore be
detected.5
Conductive surface sensors have been recently devel-
oped for crack detection in both one- and two-
dimensional (1D and 2D) settings. 1D sensors are
usually made of strips of conductive materials,513
while a 2D sensor (also referred to as a sensing skin)
consists of a patch of conductive material and an array
of electrodes on the patch perimeter.1421 While the
above-mentioned 2D sensors use EIT to reconstruct
the spatial conductivity (or resistivity) distribution,
other types of 2D sensors have also been developed.
For example, Laflamme et al. used elastomeric capaci-
tors22 to monitor damage in wood and concrete, and
Glisic and coworkers have successfully utilized dense
arrays of strain sensors to capture fatigue cracking in
steel and concrete.2325
1D sensors can indicate the presence of a crack, but
provide only limited information on the location of the
crack. 2D sensors, in contrast, are able to locate cracks
and even reveal their shapes.1820,26
Sensing skins have also been designed for other
functionalities, namely for detecting localized pressure
change,2729 damage in glass fiber sheets30 and change
in the pH at the surface.15 The ability of sensing skins
to detect the presence of ions is yet to be studied.
In this paper, we investigate how the functionality of
a sensing skin could be extended to detect the presence
of chloride ions. We also study whether a sensing skin
could spatially localize a chloride ingress and distinguish
between the presence of chlorides and cracking. For
these aims, we develop a multi-layer sensing skin in
which one layer is sensitive to both chlorides and crack-
ing, and another layer is sensitive to cracking only.
While here only chlorides are considered, the idea can
be extended to other elements and ions, by properly
engineering the sensing skin.
The following sections describe the experimental
studies in which the feasibility of such a multifunctional
multi-layer sensing skin is tested first with a polymeric
substrate, and next with a reinforced concrete beam
under the influence of simultaneous chloride ingress
and cracking.
Materials and methods
An EIT-based sensing skin monitors phenomena on the
substrate surface via imaging local changes of the elec-
trical conductivity of the sensing skin.1420 To detect
the presence of chlorides with a sensing skin, its con-
ductivity needs to alter under the influence of chlorides.
However, since the conductivity of virtually any con-
ductive material also changes if it cracks, it would be
Structural Health Monitoring 16(2)
very difficult to distinguish between the presence of
chlorides and cracking, if only a single layer of sensing
skin sensitive to chlorides was used. Therefore, we pro-
pose a multi-layer sensing skin where chlorides change
the conductivity of one of the layers while the second
layer is not affected by the chlorides. If successful, the
latter layer reveals the locations of cracks, and enables
distinguishing between the chlorides and cracks on the
first layer.
The following subsections discuss the selection of
suitable materials for the multifunctional sensing skin,
briefly review the EIT and describe the experiments car-
ried out for testing the sensing skin.
Sensing skin materials
Previous studies1820 have demonstrated the feasibility
of using a layer of electrically conductive paint as a sen-
sing skin for detecting cracks: a thin layer of paint rup-
tures easily with cracking of the substrate, and it is easy
to apply, thus enabling large-scale applications. In the
present study, we tested the suitability of copper and
silver paint as materials of the multifunctional sensing
skin which detects and distinguishes between chloride
attacks and cracking. These materials were selected for
the tests because (1) copper reacts rapidly with chlor-
ides, forming copper chloride and copper oxide, and
hence the conductivity of the colloidal copper paint is
expected to decrease rapidly with exposure to chlorides;
(2) silver reacts negligibly with chlorides, and therefore
the conductivity of the silver paint is expected to remain
almost unaltered in the presence of chlorides.
To study whether the conductivities of copper and
silver paint change in the presence of chlorides, a simple
experiment was performed. Using each paint, a strip of
dimensions 10 cm 3 1 cm was applied to a polymeric
substrate. Both strips of paint were exposed to a satu-
rated NaCl solution; see Figure 1. The electrical resis-
tances of the strips are shown as functions of time in
Figure 1. As expected, the resistance of the silver paint
remains constant over time while the resistance of the
copper paint increases rapidly with the exposure to
chlorides. Based on these findings, copper and silver
paint were selected as the materials for the multi-layer
sensing skins used in the experiments described below.
Detection of damage with EIT
In EIT, objects are imaged based on electrical measure-
ments from the objects surface. A set of electric cur-
rents are injected into the object through electrodes
attached to the surface, and corresponding to each cur-
rent injection electric potentials on the electrodes are
measured. Based on the resulting set of (indirect) mea-
surements, the spatial distribution of the electrical
Seppanen et al.
Figure 1. Photograph of the silver and copper paint strips used
for testing the sensing skin materials; the hollow cylinders at the
centers of the strips are reservoirs filled with the saturated
NaCl solution. The graphs represent the electrical resistances of
the two paint strips during the chloride exposure.
conductivity (s) (or resistivity r = 1=s) within the
object is reconstructed.3133
In many applications of EIT, the electric currents
flow in three dimensions, and the imaging problems
amount to reconstructing the three-dimensional (3D)
distribution of the conductivity.34 Sensing skins, how-
ever, are very thin for example, the thicknesses of
painted sensing skins are of the order of micro-
meters.1820 Moreover, the conductivities of sensing
skins are typically orders of magnitude higher than the
conductivities of the substrates to which the skins are
attached. Consequently, the leakage of the electric cur-
rent from the sensing skin to the substrate is usually
negligible, that is, the electric current flows essentially
in two dimensions, and only 2D reconstruction of the
electrical conductivity of the sensing skin is required.
Mathematically, the image reconstruction problem
in EIT is an ill-posed inverse problem.35 The practical
implication of this is that classical solutions (such as
the least-squares estimate for s) are non-unique and
extremely sensitive to modeling errors and measure-
ment noise. For the same reason, the spatial resolution
of EIT is typically rather low.33 However, if some prior
information on the target conductivity distribution is
available, it can be possible to improve the resolution
by specifically designed computational methods for the
image reconstruction. In recent publications,19,20 novel
computational methods were developed for the applica-
tion of imaging damage to a sensing skin. The methods
included an approximative modeling error correction
based on a set of reference measurements of the sensing
skin before the damage, and a total variation (TV)
217
regularization36 which is a suitable method when the
conductivity features sharp edges (such as cracks) on a
relatively homogeneous background. These application-
specific computational methods yielded significantly
better resolutions than conventional methods.
In the present study, EIT reconstructions are computed
as in the cited papers.19,20 We note, however, that it is
not guaranteed that use of the computational methods
developed for crack detection is also feasible for the
detection of chlorides and/or simultaneous detection of
chlorides and cracking. In particular, the TV regulari-
zation is not necessarily an optimal choice in the case
of chloride detection, because the ingress of chlorides is
a diffusive process, featuring spatial smoothness rather
than sharp edges in the conductivity distribution.
Nevertheless, the TV regularization is used, because of
the (possible) presence of cracks in the chloride-
detecting layer of the sensing skin.
Experiments
To study the feasibility of the proposed multifunctional
multi-layer sensing skin, two experiments were carried
out. In the first experiment, the sensing skin was applied
to the surface of a polymeric substrate. The sensing skin
was directly exposed to the chloride solution, and the
cracking of the substrate surface was physically simu-
lated by cutting the skin with a knife. In the second
experiment, the sensing skin was applied to the surface
of a reinforced concrete beam. In this experiment, the
chloride exposure was induced by adding NaCl solution
to a reservoir embedded inside the beam, and the beam
was cracked in three-point bending.
Experiment 1: Circular sensing skin on a polymeric
substrate. In the first experiment, the sensing skin was
applied to an acrylic sheet (plexi-glass). According to
the manufacturer, the electrical resistivity of the acryl is
1.931013Om.
Figure 2(a) shows schematically the structure of the
sensing skin: the silver layer was painted on the sub-
strate surface, and the copper paint formed the layer
on top. Both of the paint layers were circular and 15.20
cm in diameter. To electrically insulate the two sensing
skin layers from each other, a thin layer of latex paint
was painted between them. This insulating layer was
also circular and 16.50 cm in diameter. All three paint
layers were spread on the surface using a regular brush.
A total of 16 equally spaced electrodes made of cop-
per foil were placed on the perimeter of each layer, as
illustrated in Figure 2(a). The electrodes were rectangu-
lar in shape (width 0.64 cm, length 2.0 cm). The electro-
des were glued to the substrate/insulating layer using
liquid adhesive before applying each layer of conductive
218
Figure 2. Schematic illustration of the layers in sensing skin and electrode numbering in (a) Experiment 1 where the sensing skin
was applied to a polymeric substrate, and (b) Experiment 2 where the sensing skin was applied to a concrete beam.
paint. Approximately 0.40 cm of the length of each elec-
trode was covered with the conductive paint resulting in
a robust electrical contact between the sensing skin and
the electrode. The locations of the electrodes are indi-
cated in the photograph shown in Figure 3.
To study the ability of the multi-layer sensing skin
to detect chloride exposure, a saline reservoir was
mounted on the top surface of the sensing skin, and
filled with a saturated NaCl solution. The reservoir was
made of a segment of a circular PVC pipe (inner dia-
meter 2.54 cm), and it was mounted on the Cu layer of
Figure 3. Photograph of a multi-layer sensing skin applied
to the surface of a polymeric substrate (Experiment 1). A
chloride-containing reservoir is placed on top of the sensing skin.
The electrodes attached to both layers are marked with numbers;
the numbers of electrodes in the Ag layer are labeled with *.
Structural Health Monitoring 16(2)
the sensing skin using silicon caulk. For the location of
the reservoir, see Figure 3.
The duration of the chloride exposure was 96 hours.
The first set of EIT measurements was collected before
the exposure to the chloride (reference measurement19),
and during the exposure both sensing skins were
sequentially imaged with EIT. After the chloride expo-
sure period, cracking of the substrate was physically
simulated by cutting the sensing skin with a sharp
knife. EIT measurements were collected from both
layers at four stages of simulated cracking (see Figure 5,
left column, last four rows).
The EIT measurements were carried out using in-
house-developed equipment. The equipment consisted
of a current supply, a voltmeter, two switch systems
and a computer.18,37 At each state of chloride exposure/
cracking a set of EIT measurement data was collected
from both layers. On each layer, a set of EIT measure-
ments consisted of electrode potential data correspond-
ing to 30 pairwise current injections, between electrodes
i and j, i = f1, 9g, j = 1, . . . , 16, i 6 j. In these electric
current injections, a 1.0 mA DC current was used.
Corresponding to each current injection, the potentials
of all 16 electrodes were measured with respect to a
common ground, leading to an EIT data set with a
total of 30316 = 480 potential measurements corre-
sponding to each sensing skin layer at each state of
chloride exposure/cracking.
We note that, theoretically, there is redundancy in
the measurement data; if the measurement noise did
not exist, the data corresponding to 15 injections (e.g.
between i = 1, j = 2, . . . , 16) would carry all information
in the rest of the data, and by using the so-called reci-
procity theorem the data could be reduced even further.
However, when measurement noise is present, increas-
ing the number of current injections and potential
Seppanen et al.
Figure 4. (a) Photograph of the reinforced concrete beam
instrumented with a multi-layer sensing skin in Experiment 2.
The electrodes attached to both sensing skin layers are marked
with numbers; the numbers of electrodes in the Ag layer are
labeled with *. The dashed circle shows the approximate
location of the projection of the embedded end of the reservoir
buried in the beam. (b) Photograph of the backside of the beam
showing the location of the reservoir.
measurements, and using additional (theoretically
redundant) measurements corresponding to more than
one ground electrode i, improves the signal-to-noise
ratio of the data.
Experiment 2: Sensing skin applied to a concrete beam. The
dimensions of the concrete beam used in the second
experiment (Figure 4) were 50.8 cm 3 15.2 cm 3 15.2
cm. The concrete had a w/c ratio of 0.55, aggregate vol-
ume fraction of 40.0%, and maximum aggregate size of
0.20 cm. Ordinary Portland cement, Type I, was used,
and the concrete was mixed following ASTM C192-06.
The beam specimen was moist cured for 28 days and
dried for a few days at room RH and temperature
before applying the sensing skin. The beam was lightly
reinforced to allow the formation of cracks before the
final failure; the reinforcement consisted of two longi-
tudinal normal strength steel rebars (diameter 0.50 cm)
that were placed 4.0 cm from the bottom tensile fiber
of the beam. A 3.0 cm notch was cut at the mid-span
perpendicular to the bottom fiber, to ensure the forma-
tion of flexural cracks before shear cracking.
The sensing skin applied to the concrete beam is illu-
strated schematically in Figure 2(b). Since in this
experiment the objective was to detect the ingress of
chloride ions through the concrete, the Cu layer
being sensitive to chlorides was applied on the
219
surface of the concrete. Next, the Cu layer was cov-
ered with the layers of latex and silver paint. A photo-
graph of the sensing skin installation in Experiment 2
is shown in Figure 4(a).
A total of 28 electrodes were mounted at the peri-
meter of each layer. The locations of the electrodes are
shown in Figures 2(b) and 4(a). The same type of elec-
trodes were used as in Experiment 1.
When casting the concrete beam, a section of a PVC
pipe with a 2.54 cm inner diameter was embedded
inside the beam at an angle (see Figure 4(b)), forming a
reservoir for the NaCl solution. The embedded end was
positioned approximately at 2.50 cm distance from the
beam face on which the sensing skin was applied. The
dashed circle drawn in Figure 4(a) shows the approxi-
mate location of the projection of the embedded end of
the reservoir on the surface. The reservoir was filled
with a saturated NaCl solution, and the solution was
allowed to be absorbed by the concrete from the
embedded end of the reservoir for 120 hours. Again,
the first sets of EIT measurements were carried out
before starting the NaCl exposure, and then after every
24 hours up to 120 hours of NaCl solution ingress.
After 120 hours of chloride ingress, the beam was
loaded in a three-point bending test (see Figure 4(a)). A
displacement-controlled loading with a rate of 0.13 cm/min
was applied in a closed-loop universal testing machine,
and the vertical displacement in the mid-span of the
beam was measured by the testing machine. At six dif-
ferent levels of loading, EIT measurements were carried
out.
In EIT measurements of this experiment, 54 current
injections were applied to each layer of the sensing skin,
between electrode pairs i and j, i = f6, 21g, j = 1, . . . ,
28, i 6 j. Corresponding to each current injection,
potentials of all 28 electrodes were measured against a
common ground.
Results and discussion
Circular sensing skin on the polymeric substrate
The results of Experiment 1 are illustrated in Figure 5.
The left column of the figure shows the photographs of
the sensing skin at the times of EIT measurements, and
the middle and right columns represent the EIT recon-
structions of the Cu (chloride and crack detection) layer
and the Ag (crack detection) layer, respectively.
The first six rows in Figure 5 correspond to 5, 24,
32, 48, 72 and 96 hours of chloride exposure. After five
hours of exposure, the EIT reconstruction of the Cu
layer shows a very small decrease of the electrical con-
ductivity from the initial conductivity (0.92 S). At the
following three time intervals (24 to 48 hours), the
reconstructed conductivity of the Cu layer continues
220 Structural Health Monitoring 16(2)

decreasing roughly in the area where the Cu layer was

exposed to the NaCl solution. At 72 and 96 hour EIT
reconstructions of the Cu layer, the changes of the con-
ductivity are very clear, and correspond well to the
location of the NaCl exposure. According to 96 h EIT
reconstruction, the conductivity of the Cu skin is close
to zero at the location of the NaCl exposure, indicating
that the Cu layer has locally been entirely reacted with
NaCl.
The reconstructed conductivities of the Ag layer
remain practically unaltered during the entire chloride
exposure (Figure 5, right column, first six rows). This is
an expected result, because the silver layer is not
directly in contact with the NaCl solution, and because
in any case the silver paint is not sensitive to chlorides,
as demonstrated in Figure 1.
The last four rows in Figure 5 correspond to four
different stages of cracking after the chloride exposure.
In the photographs of the sensing skin (left column),
the cracks cut to the sensing skin are highlighted with
black lines, for clearer visualization. The cracks are
clearly detected by both sensing skin layers: in all fours
states of cracking, the EIT reconstructions of both the
Cu and Ag layers feature very low conductivity at the
locations of the cracks. Although the spatial resolution
of the EIT reconstructions is not very high, the recon-
structions of both layers also roughly show the shape of
the crack. The main difference between the EIT recon-
structions of the Cu and Ag layers is that the Cu layer
reconstruction features low conductivity also in the
location of the chloride contact.
The result of Experiment 1 supports the feasibility
of using the proposed multi-layer sensing skin for struc-
tural health monitoring: as expected, the Cu layer of
the sensing skin detects both the chlorides and cracks,
whereas the Ag layer only shows the cracks, thus
enabling us to distinguish between the presence of
chlorides and of cracking.

Sensing skin applied to a concrete beam

Figure 6 summarizes the results of the second experi-
ment. The left column of the figure shows the photo-
graphs of the beam at the times of the EIT
measurements. The middle and the right columns illus-
trate the EIT reconstructions of the Cu and Ag layers,
respectively.
The first six rows in Figure 6 correspond to times
24, 48, 72, 96, 120 and 144 hours after adding the NaCl
solution to the embedded reservoir. The EIT recon-
struction of the Cu layer at time 24 hours (first row,
second column) shows an area of clear decrease of the
electrical conductivity at the location near the outlet of
the embedded NaCl reservoir (see the dashed line in
Figure 4(a)). This indicates that during the course of 24
Figure 5. Experiment 1: photographs of the sensing skin at the
times of the EIT measurements (left column), and the
corresponding EIT reconstructions of the Cu (chloride and
crack detection) layer and the Ag (crack detection) layer (middle
and right columns, respectively).
hours, the NaCl solution has penetrated through the
concrete from the outlet of the reservoir to the concrete
surface, and started corroding the Cu layer of the sen-
sing skin. This is an appealing result, because it
Seppanen et al. 221

Figure 6. Experiment 2: Photographs of the sensing skin at times of the EIT measurements (left column), and the corresponding
EIT reconstructions of the Cu (chloride and crack detection) layer and the Ag (crack detection) layer (middle & right columns,
respectively).
222
Figure 7. Load versus machine stroke displacement in the
mid-span of the notched beam and six different points where
EIT experiments were carried out.
demonstrates the capability of the Cu layer to detect
chloride ingress to the concrete surfaces. In the subse-
quent EIT reconstructions of the Cu layer, up to 144
hours of chloride solution ingress, the chloride contact
area keeps increasing slowly. In the corresponding
reconstructions of the Ag layer (right column, first six
rows), the conductivity remains nearly unaltered.
As described in the previous section, the beam was
loaded in three-point bending after the chloride migra-
tion test. Figure 7 shows the graph of the load versus
the stroke of the testing machine. Six load levels (2.2,
11.6, 16.9, 27.6, 23.1 and 21.8 kN) at which the EIT
measurements were carried out are marked in the graph
with red dots.
The photographs of the beam at different load levels
and the corresponding EIT reconstructions are shown
in the last six rows of Figure 6. The photographs in the
left column show the formation of cracks in the bend-
ing test. Again, the cracks observed on the sensing skin
are highlighted with black in the photographs.
At load level 2.2 kN, no visual crack in the beam is
observed. As therefore expected, at this level of loading
neither of the sensing skin layers shows a change in
conductivity from the previous state (EIT images corre-
sponding to 144 h of chloride exposure). At load level
11.6 kN, two small cracks close to each other appear
next to the notch at the bottom of the beam. The Cu
layer of the sensing skin does not yet observe these
cracks, but the Ag layer shows a small non-conductive
region in the location of the cracks. At load level 16.9
kN, one of the cracks grows in length, forming a flex-
ural crack that starts from the notch and extends
Structural Health Monitoring 16(2)
approximately to one-third of the height of the beam.
Both of the sensing skin layers detect this crack, yet
both seem to overestimate the length of the crack. In
addition to the crack, the Cu layer still also shows the
damage caused by the chlorides. At load 27.6 kN, the
flexural crack elongates significantly and a sudden
flexuralshear crack occurs between electrodes 21 and
22. At the two final states of loading, both of these
cracks grow in size, both extending from the bottom to
the top of the beam. Both the Cu and Ag layers detect
the appearance of the flexuralshear crack at load 27.6
kN. The Cu layer also roughly detects the shapes of
both cracks, and still shows the chloride damage. The
Ag layer also detects both of the cracks, although the
resolution of the EIT reconstructions corresponding to
loads 23.1 and 21.8 is not as good as the respective
resolutions in the Cu layer.
The series of images in Figure 6 verifies the feasibility
of using the proposed multi-layer sensing skin for the
detection of chloride attacks and cracking in concrete
structures. The Cu layer of the sensing skin detects the
location of the chlorides which have migrated through
the concrete and the cracks induced by the three-point
bending, while the Ag layer detects only the cracks.
Despite the inaccuracies in the reconstructions of the
Ag layer conductivity, the cracks are clearly visible, and
the Ag layer of the sensing skin allows for distinguish-
ing between the chloride damage and cracks in the Cu
layer.
Discussion
We note that the spatial resolution of the EIT recon-
structions in Figures 5 and 6 is not as high as in the
previous studies with single-layer sensing skins using
the same image reconstruction methods.19,20 The lower
resolution of the images in the present paper is due to
the higher noise level observed while conducting the
experiment. The increase of the noise level was proba-
bly caused by the mutual interference between the elec-
trodes and wires of the two sensing skins; this problem
should be avoided in the future by properly shielding
the electrodes and the wires.
In both experiments, the reconstructions correspond-
ing to the Ag layer seem to have poorer resolution than
the reconstructions corresponding to the Cu layer. One
reason for the lower resolution of the Ag layer is the
presence of the insulating latex layer which is made of
latex paint. Latex paint is significantly more stretch-
able than the concrete substrate and the Cu and Ag
layers. While both the Cu and Ag layers have an excep-
tional strain compatibility with concrete, due to their
small thickness and brittleness, the latex layer does not
have a good strain compatibility with the concrete or
with the Cu and Ag layers. We speculate that when
Seppanen et al.
cracking occurred in concrete, the Cu layer, which was
the layer in contact with the concrete, accurately cap-
tured the cracking, but the latex layer stretched and
resulted in a lower resolution in the Ag layer which was
on top of the latex paint. In addition, this may indicate
that the Ag layer has suffered from greater noise than
the Cu layer. Our previous studies on using single-layer
sensing skins for crack detection have not shown a dif-
ference between the accuracies with the two materials.
In the multi-layer sensing skin, the accuracy of
reconstructions is of great importance, because the dif-
ference in the crack shapes in the Cu and Ag layers
might be misinterpreted as chlorides. However, if the
accuracy of the multi-layer sensing skin can reach the
same level as the accuracy of the single-layer sensing
skin,20 the misinterpretation risk should be small.
Finally, we note that in a real-life setting, change in
temperature can also affect the conductivity of the sen-
sing skin and cause a risk of misinterpreting the tem-
perature change as cracking or chlorides. However, this
problem can probably be avoided, because the charac-
teristics of the conductivity change due to temperature
change are quite different from those of the conductiv-
ity change due to cracking and chlorides: while cracks
and chlorides make the sensing skin locally non-
conductive in a short period of time, temperature
changes are typically smooth temporally and spatially,
and they are expected to cause a smaller change to the
conductivity values. Of course, the above needs to be
verified experimentally.
Conclusions
In this paper, a novel multifunctional multi-layer EIT-
based sensing skin was proposed. The sensing skin
consisted of two layers of electrically conductive paint
separated by an electrically insulating material. Each of
the conductive layers was chosen according to its func-
tionality: one layer of the sensing skin, made of colloi-
dal copper paint, was sensitive to both cracking and
chlorides, while the second layer, made of colloidal sil-
ver paint, was sensitive to cracking only. The spatial
distributions of the electrical conductivity of both layers
were reconstructed using EIT imaging, and based on
the reconstructed images the chlorides and cracks were
detected and distinguished.
The feasibility of the proposed monitoring system
was tested with two experiments in which sensing skins
were applied to a polymeric substrate and a concrete
beam. In both experiments, the multi-layer sensing skin
was exposed to chlorides and subjected to cracking. The
results demonstrate that multi-layer sensing skins can
be used for simultaneously detecting cracks and aggres-
sive agents, such as chlorides. The proposed sensing
223
system could potentially be used to monitor the health
and deterioration risk of critical infrastructure, such as
nuclear waste storage and containment facilities.
Acknowledgements
This work was performed in the Department of Applied
Physics at the University of Eastern Finland, and in the
Materials and Sensor Development Laboratory and
Constructed Facilities Laboratory at North Carolina State
University. The first author of this paper would like to acknowl-
edge the support provided by Academy of Finland (projects
270174 and 273536). The second author was in part supported
by the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental
Engineering at North Carolina State University. The authors
would like to acknowledge all the support which has made these
laboratories and this research possible.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article:This work was partially funded by Academy of
Finland (projects 270174 and 273536).
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