Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Reinforced Concrete under Accelerated Corrosion
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 8
Abstract
The development of techniques capable of evaluating the deterioration of reinforced concrete structures is instrumental to the advancement of structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques and service life estimate methodologies for constructed facilities. One of the main causes of degradation is the corrosion of steel reinforcement. This process can be modeled phenomenologically, whereas laboratory tests aimed at studying durability responses are typically accelerated to provide usable results within a realistic period of time. Numerous nondestructive methods have been recently studied. Acoustic emission (AE) is emerging as a nondestructive tool to detect the onset and progression of deterioration mechanisms associated with concrete cracking. In this paper, an accelerated corrosion and continuous AE monitoring test setup is presented, providing relevant information on the characteristics of the corrosion circuit, continuous measurement procedure, selection of AE sensors, and AE parameter setting for data acquisition. The effectiveness of AE in detecting and characterizing the initiation of the corrosion process is discussed on the basis of results from small-scale, precracked RC specimens that are representative of areas near the clear cover in typical RC members. The main outcome is a new approach of AE data interpretation based on time-driven parameters.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the financial support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technology Innovation Program, Cooperative Agreement Number 70NANB9H9007. The authors would like also to thank Artistic Stones Inc. for their valuable collaboration.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 8 • August 2013
Pages: 1022 - 1029
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 11, 2012
Accepted: Aug 7, 2012
Published online: Aug 28, 2012
Discussion open until: Jan 28, 2013
Published in print: Aug 1, 2013
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