Monitoring Corrosion of Rebar Embedded in Mortar Using High-Frequency Guided Ultrasonic Waves
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 135, Issue 1
Abstract
Corrosion of reinforced concrete structures creates serviceability and safety issues, costing millions of dollars for inspection, repair, and rehabilitation. Recent efforts have focused on monitoring corrosion in situ, providing accurate real-time information for decision-making. The goal of this research is the creation of an embeddable ultrasonic sensing network for assessment of reinforcement deterioration. Toward this effort, guided ultrasonic waves were used to monitor reinforced mortar specimens undergoing accelerated uniform and localized corrosion. Longitudinal waves were invoked at higher frequencies , where the attenuation is a local minimum. Using a through-transmission configuration, waveforms were sensitive to both forms of corrosion damage. Scattering, mode conversions, and reflections from irregularities at the bar surface from uniform corrosion and the severely tapered cross section from localized corrosion are thought to cause the increase in attenuation. Because localized corrosion did not yield a discontinuity that was nearly perpendicular to the bar axis, incident waves were severely scattered, mode converted, and rapidly attenuated. As evidence, this was the inability of pulse-echo testing to detect reflected waveforms for localized corrosion.
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Acknowledgments
This research was made possible by the support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSFCMS 02-01305. The support of Dr. Shih Chi Liu is greatly appreciated. The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign provided the necessary materials and facilities to create the mortar specimens presented in this paper.
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© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 6, 2007
Accepted: Jul 1, 2008
Published online: Jan 1, 2009
Published in print: Jan 2009
Notes
Note. Associate Editor: Erik A. Johnson
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