Application of S1 A1 Modes of Acoustic Emission Waves for Health Monitoring of Reinforced Concrete Slab

Rigid Pavement which is principally a slab made of reinforced concrete is predominant in recent years for its long-lasting structural lifecycle. Comparable to the other RC structures, permanent deformation in the form of cracks are generated because of external loads. Such cracks are harmful from the serviceability point of the pavements. The literature available in this field suggests that acoustic emission (AE) is an efficient technique in the domain of structural health monitoring (SHM) to find the damage in real time. Additionally, the works done by the previous researchers show that investigation through the AE waveforms in the time-frequency domain using wavelet transform is also being used in the past for detecting the damage in concrete structures. However, as per the knowledge of the authors, the appropriateness of group velocity in detecting the damage, which has proved to be very effective in different types of materials, its application in RC slabs is rare as per the literature. In this study, the authors have attempted for damage detection in a sample RC slab with the use of the higher symmetric & anti-symmetric modes and group velocity of AE waves. The results found for localization are promising.