Atomic-Scale Simulation of Sensor-Enabled Geosynthetics for Health-Monitoring of Reinforced Soil Slopes and Embankments

摘要

Safety and serviceability assessment of reinforced soil slopes and embankments includes monitoring their reinforcement strains during their service life to ensure that they are within the allowable limits. Strain gauges are used as a common method to measure and monitor strains in geosynthetic reinforcement. However, the use of strain gauges has several shortcomings which are discussed in the paper. Recently, a novel technique has been developed at the University of Oklahoma which is based on the piezoresistivity of carbon black (CB)- and carbon nanotube (CNT)-filled polymers. This method is devised to eliminate the need for conventional instrumentation to measure tensile strain in modified geosynthetics. In this technique, a polymeric material (e.g. polyethylene, PE) and an electrically conductive filler (e.g. CB or CNT), are blended to fabricate Sensor-Enabled Geosynthetics (SEG) with piezoelectric characteristics. In this study, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are used to examine the effect of the filler (CB in this case) on the stress-strain behavior of SEG samples. Dreiding and OPLS force fields are adopted for the simulations which are carried out in the LAMMPS~© environment. Results of the study indicate that adding small quantities of CB to otherwise pure PE samples may not adversely affect their tensile strength properties.