Damage test and monitoring of reinforced concrete (RC) beams under four-point bending

The damage monitoring of non-corroded and corroded reinforced concrete (RC) beams subjected to four-point bending is reported in this paper. Acoustic emission(AE) technique was applied to investigate the damage growth and the failure mechanism of the RC beams. The results show that the trend of the fractured state of RC beams at different loading stages can be determined from the trend of the Ib-value curve. Compared with uncorroded and lightly corroded beams, severity corroded beams have higher maximumIb-value curves and more active acoustic emission signals. The corrosion of steel reinforcement obviously accelerates the initiation and propagation of cracks in RC beams under four-point bending tests.