Fatigue damage assessment of reinforced concrete beam using acoustic emission technique / Noorsuhada Md Nor

Damage due to fatigue loading in a reinforced concrete (RC) beam is a crucial phenomenon that requires assessment. Acoustic emission (AE) technique can be used to identify the fatigue damage progression in the RC beam. Third point loading fatigue test was carried out in the laboratory of heavy structure on a small size RC beam of 150 mm x 150 mm x 750 mm and the actual size of RC beam of 300 mm x 600 mm x 4050 mm. The fatigue test was carried out based on various ranges of maximum fatigue loading, based on the first crack load, Pcr and ultimate static load, Pult. Four objectives were outlined; to investigate the fatigue crack progression of RC beam specimens corresponding to the AE characteristic, to correlate damage classification of the RC beam specimens with respect to intensity analysis, to evaluate the fatigue crack characterization of RC beam specimens based on average frequency and RA value and to develop a new approach in fatigue damage assessment of RC beam specimens based on AE characteristics. RA value is the rise time divided by peak amplitude (μs/v or ms/v). In the review, it was found that the analysis based on AE signal collected from channel basis is generally used. Channel basis is an analysis of AE data at a particular channel…