4. Experimental Results and Discussion
4.1. Evaluation of the Reliability of the Embedded Strain Sensor
It is important to ensure proper measurements of the tensile strain using the embedded strain sensor. For this purpose, a dog-bone concrete specimen is tested in tension and the tensile strain is measured by both the embedded gage as well as 2 wire strain gages mounted on the surface of the concrete specimen. Figure 7 presents the results showing that the internally measured strain is practically equal to the surface measured strains. This implies that the tensile stress is applied uniformly to the specimen and the embedded sensor can be used to monitor concrete’s tensile strain. Based on this conclusion, further measurements in this study employ only the embedded sensor.