Implementation of Acoustic Emission Testing to Study the Type of Cracking in Reinforced Concrete Beams

Abstract

In this experimental study, crack classification in reinforced concrete (RC) beams was carried out using acoustic emission (AE) testing. Two types of under reinforced RC beams were tested in laboratory subjected to four-point bending, and monotonically increased load was applied. The first type of RC beam had shear reinforcement (steel stirrups), and the second type of RC beam had no shear reinforcement. The generated AE during the fracture process in the tested RC beams were used for the crack classification analysis. Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) of acoustic emission signals was performed. It was observed that the RC beam without shear reinforcement failed suddenly (brittle nature). However, the RC beam with shear reinforcement failed gradually thereby exhibiting ductile nature. In both the RC beams, considerable AE related to shear cracking appeared at a 20–30% peak load. In the case of the RC beam with shear reinforcement, initially, tensile cracks were developed at the bottom of the beam and slowly started widening upward. Diagonal shear cracks started forming near to the supports when the test specimen reaching to collapse. In the case of the RC beam with no shear stirrups, tensile cracks originated at the bottom of the beam. But in this case, the influence of shear cracks developed near to the supports was more pronounced as it propagated rapidly. By comparing the different AE parameters, a steady increase in the number of hits till failure was observed in the case of the RC beam with shear reinforcement. But on the other hand, an abrupt increase in the number of hits was observed after 50% of peak load in the case of the RC beam with no shear reinforcement. The results are useful to study the sensitivity of AE to the shear reinforcement present in the RC beams. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.