Study on stage characteristics of hydraulic concrete fracture under uniaxial compression using acoustic emission
Xiaoqun Yan, Huaizhi Su, Li Ai, Vafa Soltangharaei, Xiaoyang Xu, Kefu Yao
Abstract
Acoustic emission (AE) can monitor and evaluate the cracking situations of hydraulic structures for it is real-time and non-destructive. However, a current challenge of this approach is to accurately identify the various stages during the cracking process. The innovation of this paper lies in the application of AE data in analyzing the stage characteristics during the whole process of hydraulic concrete fracture. First, the slope changing of the cumulative ringing count curve was used to determine the cracking stages of hydraulic concrete. Second, the function of inter-event times (denoted as F-function) was used to further investigate the AE characteristics proximity to the final fracture. Last, the spatial-temporal-energy evolution of cracks was studied. The results show that: (1) The whole process of hydraulic concrete failure shows an obvious stage characteristic from the perspective of AE feature and it can be distinguished to five stages by the slope change of the cumulative ringing count curve; (2) The F-function can be used to identify the last two cracking stages, and it is capable of early warning the macroscopic cracking in ahead of b-value; (3) The spatial-temporal-energy distribution of cracks helps to better understanding the generation and evolution for cracks inside hydraulic concrete.