Correlation of Plastic Strain Energy and Acoustic Emission Energy in Reinforced Concrete Structures

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of the acoustic emission (AE) energy and the plastic strain energy released by some reinforced concrete (RC) specimens subjected to cyclic or seismic loadings. AE energy is calculated, after proper filtering procedures, using the signals recorded by several AE low frequency sensors (25-100 kHz) attached on the specimens. Plastic strain energy is obtained by integrating the load displacement curves drawn from the measurements recorded during the test. Presented are the results obtained for: (i) two beams (with and without an artificial notch) and a beam-column connection subjected to several cycles of imposed flexural deformations; (ii) a reinforced concrete slab supported by four steel columns, and a reinforced concrete frame structure, both of the latter are subjected to seismic simulations with a uniaxial shaking table. The main contribution of this paper, which is a review of some papers previously published by the authors, is to highlight that, in all cases, a very good correlation is found between AE energy and plastic strain energy, until the onset of yielding in the reinforcing steel. After yielding, the AE energy is consistently lower than the plastic strain energy. The reason is that the plastic strain energy is the sum of the contribution of concrete and steel, while the AE energy acquired with thresholds higher than 35 dB AE captures only the contribution of the concrete cracking, not the steel plastic deformation. This good correlation between the two energies before the yielding point also lends credibility to the use of AE energy as a parameter for concrete damage evaluation in the context of structural health monitoring.

Monitoring fracture of steel corroded reinforced concrete members under flexure by acoustic emission technique

“…It is shown that as the corrosion level becomes higher (from Control to LC and HC beam specimens), there is a collective increase in AF and a decrease in RA value of the beam specimens. On the other hand, it also indicates the transition of the beam specimen dominating fracture behaviour, which shifts from tensile to shear as the damage stage increases (from damage Stage I to IV) in accordance to the classification method suggested previously[10,27,35]. RA value versus AF for (a) Control, (b) LC and (c) HC beam specimens4.2.2.…”

Feasibility Study of Real-Time Monitoring of Pin Connection Wear Using Acoustic Emission

“…With the recent advances in structural health monitoring (SHM) [2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) [9,10], many monitoring and evaluation methods, such as modal characteristics-based methods [11][12][13], active sensing [14][15][16][17][18][19][20], electromechanical impedance [21][22][23][24][25], ultrasonic guided wave [26], active thermography [26][27][28] and vibrothermography [29,30], among others, are available. Among them, acoustic emission technique [31][32][33][34][35][36][37] is an effective nondestructive technique that can characterize the wear process [38,39], and it has been widely used in civil engineering [40][41][42][43], mechanical engineering [44][45][46][47]<...>…”

“…Compared with other non-destructive testing approaches, using a highly sensitive piezoceramic probe, the AE technique is more sensitive to material damage, and it is suitable for continuous health monitoring in real time [17]. For example, researchers have extensively applied AE techniques to monitor concrete structures [43,[64][65][66][67][68]. Aldahdooh et al [41] and Prem et al [69] demonstrated that AE technique was an effective technique to monitor the damage process of reinforced concrete.…”

Strength Correlation and Prediction of Engineered Cementitious Composites with Microwave Properties

“…Crack detection, hydration monitoring and energy harvesting using similar embedded piezoelectric transducers were reported in [6][7][8]. Recently, good correlation between acoustic emission energy at low frequency (25-100 kHz) and plastic strain energy of reinforced concrete specimens was established in [9,10]. An active acoustic method at a lower frequency of around 6 kHz was also employed [11] to monitor setting and hardening in concrete at early ages, wherein the P-wave velocity and attenuation coefficient were used to characterize the development of calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) gel inside the concrete and, hence, predict strength growth during early ages.…”