Vibration quality evaluation of reinforced concrete using energy transfer model

•An energy transfer model was proposed and verified to evaluate the vibration quality of the reinforced concrete.•The influences of concrete fluidity, aggregate proportion and rebar on energy transfer were investigated.•Optimal combinations of process parameters were obtained, providing reliable guidance for vibrating construction. Vibration is an important step to ensure the compactness of reinforced concrete. In this study, the energy transfer model is firstly proposed based on the working mechanism of the internal vibrator and vibration energy theory to evaluate the vibration quality, and the reliability of the model is verified by the experiment of sinking ball. In addition, the optimal combinations of process parameters are obtained. The worse the fluidity of concrete and the larger the aggregate proportion, the faster the energy attenuation in concrete, but the total energy absorbed by concrete and the energy transfer efficiency of the vibrator increase. The overall efficiency is greater than 57% and the highest average efficiency is 66.1%. The rebar not only accelerates the energy attenuation rate but also reduces the effective energy in the concrete. In the experiments, the average energy consumption rates of rebar are 28.5%, 57.3% and 70.9% with the reinforcement spacing of 20, 10 and 5 cm respectively. The proposed model provides a new method to evaluate the vibration quality, which contributes to dealing with unqualified areas in time and providing reliable process parameters for vibrating construction.