Towards Structural Health Monitoring of Clay-Printed Structures (2025-09)¶

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is a well-established practice to ensure safety and reliability of civil structures. With the increasing demand for environmentally responsible construction practices and the need to reduce the carbon footprint of construction projects, sustainable materials, such as clay, are gaining attention. Clay-printed structures introduce a novel domain to SHM that requires adaptations of established SHM strategies. Research on SHM strategies devised for clay-printed structures remains scarce, leaving a critical gap in understanding the long-term performance of clay-printed structures. Serving as a foundation for developing SHM strategies for clay-printed structures, this paper proposes a methodology to experimentally determine the structural behavior of clay-printed structures, including buckling, shrinkage, and load-bearing capacity, while identifying key factors critical for developing SHM strategies. The methodology proposed in this study incorporates condition assessment, constraint definition, design optimization, prototyping, and SHM strategy definition. The methodology is implemented for a wall component to experimentally determine shrinkage. Based on the structural behavior of the wall component, an SHM strategy is proposed that essentially consists of selecting appropriate SHM techniques, defining sensor placement, and establishing decision-making criteria. The results demonstrate the feasibility of constructing structurally stable clay-printed structures and provide key insights into SHM strategies for clay-printed structures, advancing sustainable construction practices.