Monitoring of stresses in in-service steel structural components is challenging, but crucial to structural safety and health evaluation. Elasto-magnetic (EM) sensors are promising for stress monitoring of steel structural components, because of their great capabilities for actual stress measurement, noncontact monitoring, and long service life. However, the low sensitivity, low signal-to-noise ratio, slow response, and complicated installation of the EM sensors limit their application flexibility. This paper presents a steel stress monitoring sensor (SSMS) using a magneto-electric (ME) sensing unit to overcome the drawbacks intrinsic in the conventional EM sensors. The ME sensing unit is made of a ME-laminated composite of Terfenol-D magnetostrictive alloy and 0.7Pb_Mg1/3Nb2/3_O3−0.3PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) piezoelectric crystal. The theoretical analysis and experimental characterization conducted on the ME sensing unit show high sensitivity, real-time response, and good linearity. Stress monitoring of a steel bar under tension is implemented for the SSMS with a pulse excitation of magnetization. The results demonstrate that the SSMS is feasible for real-time stress monitoring of steel structural components with high sensitivity, fast response, and ease of installation.
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