Abstract: Globally our environment comprises structures built to perform a meet different requirements including residential, commercial, retail, recreational and service infrastructure. Whilst, millions of tons of construction materials are deployed annually the quality control procedures in many instances have not changed to reflect today's demands. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide construction companies, engineering companies, infrastructure owners, regulators, etc. with means to automated testing/characterization of construction materials during at least one of its manufacture, deployment in construction and subsequent infrastructure life. It would be further beneficial for such automated methods to exploit self-contained data acquisition/logging modules allowing them to be employed with ease at the different points in the life cycle of a construction material and/or construction project.

Abstract: Some construction materials are chemically active materials, e.g., concrete, requiring analysis to determine structural properties and physical-mechanical properties. Increasing industry demands for cost reductions, profitability, tighter construction deadlines etc. whilst limiting potential liabilities would benefit from embedded sensors to monitor and assess the material life cycle from initial deployment through to its current and future performance. Embodiments of the invention provide for embedded sensors with low power consumption whilst supporting communications to external devices with position within the infrastructure/construction material positional tolerance with low overhead data retrieval. Embodiments of the invention support automated self-contained data acquisition/logging modules for use throughout life cycle points.

Abstract: Hundreds of thousands of concrete bridges, buildings etc. and hundreds of billions of tons of concrete require characterization throughout the process from manufacture to pouring and curing and on throughout service life. The characterization may relate to initial concrete properties, projected concrete properties, framework removal, corrosion, failure etc. Accordingly, a variety of measurements such as water content, electrical resistivity, and half-cell corrosion potential for example would be beneficially implemented as easy to use field test equipment or embedded sensors allowing lifetime monitoring to be performed rather than discrete assessments when issues become evident.