Study of the Damage Evolution of Concrete with Different Initial Defect Rates under Uniaxial Compression with Acoustic Emission Technology

It is important to evaluate the internal damage of concrete under load conditions in order to evaluate its stability and usability for building applications. In this study, the uniaxial compression of concrete with initial defect was performed, and the internal damage of concrete was monitored by acoustic emission(AE) technology in real time to study the damage process and mechanism. The mechanical properties of concrete specimens with different initial defect were determined, and the cumulative impact count of AE was recorded. The response characteristics of AE in the process of concrete compression and damage were obtained. According to the analysis of the influence of the initial defect on the Kaiser effect and since the irreversibility of the AE process is related to the degree of damage caused by the material under the pre-load, it was determined that the initial defect will aggravate the damage inside the concrete under the same load level. Based on the statistics and analysis of the Weibull cumulative function, the correlation between AE parameters and damage variables was discussed.

Experimental study on fracture properties of dam concrete under post-peak cyclic loading based on DIC and acoustic emission techniques

In order to study the fracture properties of dam concrete under post-peak cyclic loading, wedge splitting tests with three loading rates (0.001 mm/s, 0.01 mm/s, 0.1 mm/s) were performed on notched cubic dam concrete specimens. Meanwhile, the acoustic emission (AE) and digital image correlation (DIC) technologies were used to record the crack propagation process of specimens. Test results show that the fracture of dam concrete has a significant rate effect: with the loading rate increases, the peak load increases, the slope of the post-peak P-CMOD curve gradually decreases and the stiffness degradation of dam concrete becomes more serious. The cumulative AE count shows a step increasing trend and has a Kaiser effect. The Kaiser effect decreases with the post-peak cyclic loading procedure, and with the loading rate increases, the Kaiser effect increases. With the increasing of loading rate, AE energy fluctuates violently and b value fluctuates frequently, indicating the damage of dam concrete becomes more serious. As the loading procedure, the damage of the specimen accumulates gradually, and the strain recovery rate decreases gradually. With the loading rate increases, the strain recovery rate decreases and the permanent crack increases. Based on the fictitious crack model, the effective crack length shows a gradual and steady rising trend. As the loading rate increases, the growth rate of the effective crack length becomes large.

Investigation on Acoustic Emission Kaiser Effect and Frequency Spectrum Characteristics of Rock Joints Subjected to Multilevel Cyclic Shear Loads

Rock joints have obvious acoustic emission (AE) Kaiser effect and Felicity effect under multilevel cyclic shear conditions. The TFD-20H/50J rock shear apparatus was used to carry out cyclic loading and unloading joint shear tests, and the acoustic emission parameters and frequency spectrum characteristics of the whole shearing process were analyzed. The results show that, under the cyclic loading, the shear stress-displacement curve forms several cyclic hysteresis loops, and the number of loops increases with the increase of normal stress. With the cycles increase, the shear damage gradually increases, and the Felicity ratio gradually decreases. The Felicity ratio at the final shear failure moment is about 0.94~0.99. The ratio of the RA value (rise time/amplitude) and the average frequency value (RA-AF) is used to classify the cracking mode of the joint sample. There are two AE crack signal types (tensile type and shear type) during shear damage. The peak frequency is displayed as high, medium, and low three frequency bands, which are distributed in the range of 0~35 kHz, 35~122 kHz, and 122~300 kHz, respectively. Both low-frequency and high-frequency signals account for less than 10%, and medium-frequency signals account for more than 90%. The research of the AE monitoring signals of multilevel shear behaviors can help understand the shear-friction mechanisms of rock joints.