Detecting crack profile in concrete using digital image correlation and acoustic emission

Failure process in concrete structures is usually accompanied by cracking of concrete. Understanding the cracking pattern is very important while studying the failure governing criteria of concrete. The cracking phenomenon in concrete structures is usually complex and involves many microscopic mechanisms caused by material heterogeneity. Since last many years, fracture or damage analysis by experimental examinations of the cement based composites has shown importance to evaluate the cracking and damage behavior of those heterogeneous materials with damage accumulation due to microcracks development ahead of the propagating crack tip; and energy dissipation resulted during the evolution of damage in the structure. The techniques used in those experiments may be the holographic interferometry, the dye penetration, the scanning electron microscopy, the acoustic emission etc. Those methods offer either the images of the material surface to observe micro-features of the concrete with qualitative analysis, or the black-white fringe patterns of the deformation on the specimen surface, from which it is difficult to observe profiles of the damaged materials