In order to detect internal defects of concrete, we have studied noncontact non-destructive acoustic inspection and have detected and visualized internal defects using acoustic vibration excitation on the target surface by aerial sound waves and two-dimensional vibration velocity distribution by a laser Doppler vibrometer. Because a high sensitive scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) is used, as the sound pressure increases, the reverberation of sound waves from the surroundings may cause resonance in the galvano mirror system of the laser head of the SLDV. For real concrete structures, for example a tunnel inner wall (distance about 5–10 m), there was no problem because the sound pressure was not so large. In the case of a viaduct, it was measured remotely (about 30 m), but because it is surrounded released space, the influence was not so large. However, in a closed space surrounded by concrete, the sound pressure needs to be increased as the distance increases, and the influence of the reverberation from the surroundings on a laser head cannot be ignored. Therefore, we propose a method to solve them, and at the same time, detect the resonance frequency of internal defects and improve the visualization of the defect.

In recent years, the detachment of concrete from bridges or tunnels and the degradation of concrete structures have become serious social problems. The importance of inspection, repair, and updating is recognized in measures against degradation. We have so far studied the noncontact acoustic inspection method using airborne sound and the laser Doppler vibrometer. In this method, depending on the surface state (reflectance, dirt, etc.), the quantity of the light of the returning laser decreases and optical noise resulting from the leakage of light reception arises. Some influencing factors are the stability of the output of the laser Doppler vibrometer, the low reflective characteristic of the measurement surface, the diffused reflection characteristic, measurement distance, and laser irradiation angle. If defect detection depends only on the vibration energy ratio since the frequency characteristic of the optical noise resembles white noise, the detection of optical noise resulting from the leakage of light reception may indicate a defective part. Therefore, in this work, the combination of the vibrational energy ratio and spectrum entropy is used to judge whether a measured point is healthy or defective or an abnormal measurement point. An algorithm that enables more vivid detection of a defective part is proposed. When our technique was applied in an experiment with real concrete structures, the defective part could be extracted more vividly and the validity of our proposed algorithm was confirmed.

The noncontact acoustic inspection method focuses on the resonance phenomenon, and the target surface is measured by being vibrated with an airborne sound. It is possible to detect internal defects near the surface layer of a concrete structure from a long distance. However, it requires a fairly long measurement time to achieve the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio just to find some resonance frequencies. In our method using the conventional waveform “single-tone burst wave”, only one frequency was used for one-sound-wave emission to achieve a high S/N ratio using a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) at a safe low power (e.g., He–Ne 1 mW). On the other hand, in terms of the difference in propagation velocity between laser light and sound waves, the waveform that can be used for high-speed measurement was devised using plural frequencies for one-sound-wave emission (“multitone burst wave”). The measurement time at 35 measurement points has been dramatically decreased from 210 to 28 s when using this waveform. Accordingly, 7.5-fold high-speed measurement became possible. By some demonstration experiments, we confirmed the effectiveness of our measurement technique.

A noncontact acoustic inspection method was developed to perform measurements from a long distance (usually about 5 to 7 m but even over 30 m) and detect internal defects (up to 10 cm in depth) of concrete structures using a long-range acoustic device and a laser Doppler vibrometer. An algorithm was also proposed to detect internal defects of concrete by combining two acoustic features, the vibrational energy ratio and spectral entropy obtained by our measurement. However, in actual concrete structures, it is difficult to distinguish a boundary between a healthy part and a defective part owing to influences such as the shape of internal defects, age-induced deterioration, and the surface condition of concrete. Therefore, we propose a method to statistically evaluate the distribution of the healthy part of concrete and extract the healthy part to identify the defective part. By this proposed method, the actual concrete floor slab bridge was measured from 33 m away and some internal defects were detected and visualized. Furthermore, a result for a railroad tunnel was compared with the Schmidt hammer rebound value and elastic wave velocity to verify the validity of the proposed method.

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