Advanced Monitoring of Structures and Infrastructures Through Smart Composite Sensors and Systems Antonella D’Alessandro, Hasan Borke Birgin, and Filippo Ubertini Abstract The monitoring of the performance conditions of structures and infras- tructures during their service life and after critical events is an extremely timely topic. The potentialities of novel sensors and systems stay in their reliability and flexibility. Indeed, due to their peculiar characteristics which could possess localized features, structures should be instrumented by diffused sensing systems. Traditional sensors could generally be placed only in a limited number of locations by external applica- tions: these occurrences weaken their durability and reliability. Boosted performance are coming from novel smart materials which can combine structural performance with enhanced properties, as sensing ones. In particular, the authors have made several research efforts on the preparation and the application of self-sensing structural mate- rials, cement- and clay-based, doped with conductive fillers. This paper presents the investigation of sensing capabilities and the possible applications of cementitious materials with different carbon-based fillers. Such composites could be embedded or can constitute structural elements, thus generating a diffused smart monitoring system. Possible applications stay in the monitoring of all kinds of concrete struc- tures and infrastructures, including dynamic monitoring, traffic monitoring, damage detection, analysis of the strain/stress field variations. Keywords Smart sensors and systems · Carbon-based fillers · Cementitious materials · Structural health monitoring · Static and dynamic monitoring 1 Introduction Recent advances of materials’ science and sensing technology permitted the develop- ment of novel devices and systems for smart structures and infrastructures. In partic- ular, the availability of novel particles and fillers for civil applications induced the production and the investigation of novel multifunctional composites with enhanced properties. Among the structural materials, concrete appears particularly suitable for A. D’Alessandro (B ) · H. B. Birgin · F. Ubertini Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Perugia, Via G. Duranti, 93, 06125 Perugia, PG, Italy e-mail: antonella.dalessandro@unipg.it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Rainieri et al. (eds.), Civil Structural Health Monitoring, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 156, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74258-4_31 485