Quantitative Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Fatigue Cracks in Fracture Critical Steel Bridges

2014PDFTech ReportCAIT-UTC-007DTRT12-G-UTC16Acoustic emission testsFatigue crackingSteel bridgesStructural health monitoringBridge membersFeasibility analysisResearch HubUnited StatesRutgers University. Center for Advanced Infrastructure and TransportationSchumacher, ThomasMcConnell, Jennifer RighmanMhamdi, LassaadAhmed, ShafiqueUniversity of Delaware. Center for Innovative Bridge EngineeringUnited States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Office of the AdministratorUnited States. Federal Highway AdministrationOregon. Dept. of TransportationUS Transportation CollectionThe objective of this research is to evaluate the feasibility to employ quantitative acoustic emission (AE) techniques for monitoring of fatigue crack initiation and propagation in steel bridge members. Three A36 compact tension steel specimens were tested in the laboratory according the ASTM E647. AE sensor networks were deployed and recorded AE during the fatigue-type loading. Noise from the load application points represented a significant challenge. However, a number of events could be located and for a selected few a moment tensor inversion (MTI) was performed. Despite the challenges, the methodology has been completely established and evaluated, and can be used in future testing