Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Progressive Damage of Reinforced Concrete T-Beams under Four-Point Bending.
MATERIALS 2022;
15:ma15103486. [PMID:
35629513 PMCID:
PMC9147450 DOI:
10.3390/ma15103486]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/13/2022] [Revised: 05/03/2022] [Accepted: 05/09/2022] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Acoustic Emission (AE) is revealed to be highly adapted to monitor materials and structures in materials research and for site monitoring. AE-features can be either analyzed by means of physical considerations (geophysics/seismology) or through their time/frequency waveform characteristics. However, the multitude of definitions related to the different parameters as well as the processing methods makes it necessary to develop a comparative analysis in the case of a heterogeneous material such as civil engineering concrete. This paper aimed to study the micro-cracking behavior of steel fiber-reinforced reinforced concrete T-beams subjected to mechanical tests. For this purpose, four-points bending tests, carried out at different displacement velocities, were performed in the presence of an acoustic emission sensors network. Besides, a comparison between the sensitivity to damage of three definitions corresponding to the b-value parameter was performed and completed by the evolution of the RA-value and average frequency (AF) as a function of loading time. This work also discussed the use of the support-vector machine (SVM) approach to define different damage zones in the load-displacement curve. This work shows the limits of this approach and proposes the use of an unsupervised learning approach to cluster AE data according to physical and time/frequency parameters. The paper ends with a conclusion on the advantages and limitations of the different methods and parameters used in connection with the micro/macro tensile and shear mechanisms involved in concrete cracking for the purpose of in situ monitoring of concrete structures.
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