A COMBINED ULTRASONIC PROCEDURE TO EVALUATE DAMAGE IN CONCRETE BEAMS SUBJECTED TO STATIC LOAD

Concrete is utilized in a wide range of civil engineering applications specifically in infrastructure projects. In general, as with any construction material, it may be subjected to deterioration over time because of various reasons such as excessive loading and so on. In this research, two reinforced concrete beams on a large scale (length 2400 mm, depth 350 mm, and width 250 mm) are cast and tested under static load using the ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) technique consisting of three pairs of transducers (54 kHz, 150 kHz, and 250 kHz). During the loading, the signals are sent and captured through the used transducers at selected loading steps. Two new proposed procedures based on signal peaks in time and frequency domains are used to monitor the crack progress induced in concrete beams under concentrated load. The findings of this study revealed the suitability of the proposed two approaches to detect the propagation of cracks to evaluate damage induced in concrete beams.