An Experimental Study on Acoustic Emission of Broken Wires in Steel Strand

Abstract

Acoustic emission technology, as a nondestructive real-time monitoring technique, has been proven to be an effective method for monitoring dynamic damage of materials. The prestressing strand material used for constructing bridge ties is the focus of this study. This paper reports the experiment setup in detail. This test uses an oil pump to load the prestressing strand at a uniform rate for the tensile breakage test. Real-time signal acquisition of the strand damage during the tensile test was performed using acoustic emission equipment. The preliminary analysis of the data was used to determine the effect of amplifier and transducer type on signal acquisition.