Damage progression study in fibre reinforced concrete using acoustic emission technique

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the true fracture energy and monitor the damage progression in steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) specimens using acoustic emission (AE) features. Four point bending test is carried out using pre-notched plain and fibre reinforced (0.5% and 1% volume fraction) - concrete under monotonic loading. AE sensors are affixed at different locations of the specimens and AE parameters such as rise time, AE energy, hits, counts, amplitude and duration etc. are obtained. Using the captured and processed AE event data, fracture process zone is identified and the true fracture energy is evaluated. The AE data is also employed for tracing the damage progression in plain and fibre reinforced concrete, using both parametric- and signal- based techniques. Hilbert - Huang transform (HHT) is used in signal based processing for evaluating instantaneous frequency of the acoustic events. It is found that the appropriately processed and carefully analyzed acoustic data is capable of providing vital information on progression of damage on different types of concrete.