9. NDT Technology Based On Acoustic Emission

Application of acoustic emission (AE) as a non-destructive evaluation has been more and more successful during the past decades. However its practical application in concrete structure has been very limited due to the difficulty to properly decode the AE signal signatures. In this project, acoustic emission technology was employed to monitor the failure process of concrete under uniaxial compression. A novel 3-D source localization method was developed and the signal characteristics were correlated with the materials performance at the microscopic level to correlate the AE methodology for prediction of compressive strength.

Fig.1 Correlation of concrete failure through AE methodology

Fig.2. Acoustic Emission monitoring of concrete cylinder