Damage progression in concrete using acoustic emission test through convex hull visualization

Periodic monitoring and maintenance should be practiced in today\u27s modern infrastructure. Nowadays, most of the infrastructures are made of concrete. A testing method to check the service-ability of concrete materials should be developed without any damage to the structure. One of the promising methods of testing concrete is using a nondestructive test through an acoustic emission (AE) test. In this paper, the AE test was used to detect the location of damage inside the specimens in multiscale. The results from the AE test were analyzed and images of the damage progression were obtained using computational geometry - specifically, the convex hull algorithm. The cube specimens were classified into three types: mortar, ordinary concrete, and fiber-reinforced concrete. It was found that the progression of convex hull volume for all mixtures significantly increased on or before 20% compressive load. This indicated that the progression of AE hits in space represented by convex hull was spreading significantly in the cube specimens when low compressive force was applied. After 20% compressive load, the behavior of the change in the progression of volume of convex hull was minimal. Copyright © 2016, American Concrete Institute. All rights reserved