Application of acoustic emission tomography in concrete structures

Abstract

In order to overcome the limitations of the application of traditional acoustic emission (AE) source location algorithm (such as time of arrival (TOA)) to anisotropic medium, the AE tomography is introduced into the damage location of concrete structure. In this algorithm, the AE events are taken as the point sources. Combining the source location algorithm with the tomography algorithm, the slowness image for structure defect (damage) is reconstructed according to the change of the wave speed, which is fit for both isotropic medium and anisotropic medium. To verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm, two concrete samples with and without reinforcement are manufactured and tested. The experimental results show that by the proposed method the defect (damaged) area in the concrete structures can be visualized by wave slowness image. Besides, compared with traditional location algorithm, the location precision obtained by this method is improved obviously.