Optical sensors for the durability assessment of cement‐based infrastructure

The corrosion‐related damages on concrete infrastructure account globally for several billion US dollars annually. Up to 38 % of these costs could be saved by the application of optimized materials and/or more efficient monitoring technologies. In this contribution a novel sensor technology is presented, based on luminescent pH sensitive dyes, to quantitatively determine the pH distribution in cement‐based construction materials. Different sensor platforms were explored resulting in high‐resolution imaging techniques, as well as in miniaturized sensor probes for field application and in situ monitoring. To this point, pH sensors were successfully applied for cementitious materials to (i) quantitatively characterize the carbonation state in the lab, (ii) gain further understanding on phase assemblages and internal pH evolution related to carbonation, (iii) reveal that the actual pH at the inflection point of phenolphthalein may strongly vary depending on physicochemical material properties, (iv) monitor the pH evolution during the early hydration of different cementitious materials, and (v) measure carbonation depths using miniaturized sensor probes adopted for field applications.