Nonlinear Ultrasonic Investigation of Concrete with Varying Aggregate Size under Uniaxial Compression Loading and Unloading
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 2
Abstract
Nondestructive testing in concrete is complex due to its nonhomogeneous ingredients. The presence of varying sizes of aggregates in concrete results in nonlinear characteristics. This paper aims to compare mortar and normal concrete with varying aggregate sizes. The specimens are damaged gradually with loading and unloading paths. Fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the recorded time domain waveforms is conducted to show the frequency spectra. The amplitude of the second harmonic frequency is used as a reference to the internal damage. The analysis of the nonlinear ultrasonic parameter second harmonic amplitude is used according to each loading branch with two damage levels: total and incremental. Results showed that the magnitude of the total damage produced by mortar at the last loading branch was relatively lower than all of the concrete mixes with different sizes of aggregates. The magnitude of the incremental damage produced by mortar in every step load consistently increased as the load increased. For the normal concrete with different sizes of aggregates, the highest total damage was obtained when mixed with large aggregates. According to a previous study using a finite-element model, increasing the aggregates’ size in concrete increased the crack width. This could have led to the increase in the magnitude of the normalized second harmonic ratio. On the other hand, the incremental damage of concrete with different sizes of aggregates varied per loading branch. These results indicated the complexity of concrete as a heterogeneous material where it grew differently through formation of microcracks that varied from one loading branch to another.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) under the Ronpaku Scholarship Program and KAKENHI Grant No. 24246078.
Future Research
Future works will be aligned with a combination of other nondestructive tests such as acoustic emission and air-coupled ultrasonic testing for more internal damage growth assessment tools. Additionally, the average strain and average crack width will be used to correlate with the nondestructive test results.
References
Antonaci, P., Bruno, C. L. E., Gliozo, A. S., and Scalerandi, M. (2010). “Monitoring evolution of compressive damage in concrete with linear and nonlinear ultrasonic methods.” Cem. Concr. Res., 40(7), 1106–1113.
Breysse, D. (2012). “Nondestructive evaluation of concrete strength: An historical review and a new perspective by combining NDT methods.” Constr. Build. Mater., 33, 139–163.
Chen, X. J., Kim, J.-Y., Kurtis, K. E., Qu, J., Shen, C. W., and Jacobs, L. J. (2008). “Characterization of progressive microcracking in portland cement mortar using nonlinear ultrasonics.” NDT&E Int., 41(2), 112–118.
Daponte, P., Maceri, F., and Olivito, R. S. (1995). “Ultrasonic signal-processing techniques for the measurement of damage growth in structural materials.” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., 44(6), 1003–1008.
Grassl, P., Wong, H. S., and Buenfeld, N. R. (2010). “Influence of aggregate size and volume fraction on shrinkage induced micro-cracking of concrete and mortar.” Cem. Concr. Res., 40(1), 85–93.
JCMS (Japan Construction Material Standards). (2003). “Monitoring method for active cracks in concrete by acoustic emission.”, Federation of Construction Material Industries, Japan.
Kim, S. M., and Al-Rub, R. K. A. (2011). “Meso-scale computational modeling of the plastic-damage response of cementitious composites.” Cem. Concr. Res., 41(3), 339–358.
Korshak, B. A., Solodov, I. Y., and Ballad, E. M. (2002). “DC effects, sub-harmonics, stochasticity and ‘memory’ for contact acoustic nonlinearity.” Ultrasonics, 40(1–8), 707–713.
Liang, M. T., and Wu, J. (2002). “Theoretical elucidation on the empirical formulae for the ultrasonic testing method for concrete structures.” Cem. Concr. Res., 32(11), 1763–1769.
Murase, M., Hayashi, T., and Kitayama, T. (2014). “Visualization of higher harmonic generation at contacting surfaces.” J. Jpn. Soc. Non-Destr. Inspection, 63(6), 310–315.
Ongpeng, J. M. C., Oreta, A. W. C., and Hirose, S. (2016). “Effect of load pattern in the generation of higher harmonic amplitude in concrete using nonlinear ultrasonic test.” J. Adv. Concr. Technol., 14(5), 205–214.
Shah, A. A., and Hirose, S (2010). “Nonlinear ultrasonic investigation of concrete damaged under uniaxial compression step loading.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 476–484.
Shah, A. A., and Ribakov, Y. (2008). “Nonlinear non-destructive evaluation of concrete.” Constr. Build. Technol. J., 2(1), 111–115.
Shah, A. A., and Ribakov, Y. (2009). “Nonlinear ultrasonic evaluation of damaged concrete based on higher order harmonic generation.” Mater. Des., 30(10), 4095–4102.
Shah, A. A., and Ribakov, Y. (2010). “Effectiveness of nonlinear ultrasonic and acoustic emission evaluation of concrete with distributed damages.” Mater. Des., 31(8), 3777–3784.
Shah, A. A., and Ribakov, Y. (2011). “Recent trends in steel fibered high-strength concrete.” Mater. Des., 32(8–9), 4122–4151.
Shah, A. A., Ribakov, Y., and Hirose, S. (2009). “Nondestructive evaluation of damaged concrete using nonlinear ultrasonics.” Mater. Des., 30(3), 775–782.
Shah, A. A., Ribakov, Y., and Zhang, Ch. (2013). “Efficiency and sensitivity of linear and nonlinear ultrasonics to identifying micro- and macro-scale defects in concrete.” Mater. Des., 50, 905–916.
Solodov, I. Y. (1998). “Ultrasonics of nonlinear contacts: Propagations, reflection and NDE-applications.” Ultrasonics, 36(1–5), 383–390.
Solodov, I. Y., Krohn, N., and Busse, G. (2002). “CAN: An example of nonclassical acoustic nonlinearity in solids.” Ultrasonics, 40(1–8), 621–625.
Van De Abeele, K. E. A., Johnson, P. A., and Sutin, A. (2000). “Nonlinear elastic wave spectroscopy (NEWS) technique to discern material damage—Part 1: Nonlinear wave modulation spectroscopy (NWMS).” Res. Nondestr. Eval., 12(1), 17–30.
Wong, H. S., Zobel, M., Buenfeld, N. R., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2009). “Influence of the interfacial transition zone and microcracking on the diffusivity, permeability and sorptivity of cement-based materials after drying.” Mag. Concr. Res., 61(8), 571–589.
Yim, H. J., Kim, J. H., Park, S. J., and Kwak, H. G. (2012). “Characterization of thermally damaged concrete using nonlinear ultrasonic method.” Cem. Concr. Res., 42(11), 1438–1446.
Zheng, Y., Maev, R. G., and Solodov, I. Y. (1999). “Nonlinear acoustic applications for material characterization: A review.” Can. J. Phys., 77(12), 927–967.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 18, 2016
Accepted: Jun 22, 2016
Published online: Aug 31, 2016
Discussion open until: Jan 31, 2017
Published in print: Feb 1, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.