A paper on the distributed fiber optic (FO) monitoring of a continuous flight auger (CFA) pile has been published in the Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering journal.
The open access paper, authored by Yi Rui, Nicholas de Battista, Cedric Kechavarzi, Xiaomin Xu and Mei Yin and titled ‘Distributed fiber optic monitoring of a CFA pile with a central reinforcement bar bundle’, is about the application of distributed fiber optic sensor (DFOS) technology to measure the strain of a CFA test pile during a static load test. The technology gives much more information about the pile performance compared to traditional point sensors and can identify cross-sectional irregularities or other anomalies: “Based on this pile load test, a finite element (FE) analysis was performed using a one-dimensional nonlinear load-transfer model. Calibrated by the shaft friction and tip resistance derived from the monitored data, the FE model was able to simulate the pile and soil performance during the load testing with good accuracy.”
The paper concludes: “DFOS provides a high spatial density of measurement data, and hence can give much more information about the properties and performance of a reinforced concrete pile than point sensors. In this case study, some anomalies, like an irregular pile cross-sectional area in the CFA test pile, were identified, which would not have been possible to identify using conventional point sensors. Such a postulation is supported by the comparison between the FO data and FE analysis.”
Read the full paper published in Issue1/2021 on the journal’s website. The paper is also now available in print, Volume 15 Issue 1 (2021).