Identifier

etd-11092006-115814

Degree

Master of Science in Civil Engineering (MSCE)

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

A considerable proportion of highway bridges in the US, are made of reinforced concrete. The vulnerability of these structures during their long service life is a cause of major concern for civil engineers. Since there is a need to detect and recuperate the condition of the bridge structures numerous innovative non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques have come into the forefront. Of the many available technologies, acoustic emission (AE) monitoring has been the most popular non-destructive technique used on highway bridges. Acoustic emission is a passive monitoring technique. Thus, it can be appropriately used for field bridge monitoring applications. Usually AE monitoring is used to obtain qualitative results by observing the trends of the conventional AE parameters recorded by the data acquisition system. The extent of damage is then determined using other NDT techniques. The current study aims at applying the intensity analysis technique of damage quantification to conventional AE parameters generated from reinforced concrete members. A few reinforced concrete beams are subjected to varied cyclic load patterns in the laboratory to study the trends that may be observed in the intensity chart during damage propagation. The results thus obtained are then compared to other prevalent damage assessment techniques as well. Additionally, AE data collected from two field bridge tests are also subjected to intensity analysis technique of damage quantification to evaluate the practical viability of the technique in assessing the severity of the damage in the monitored structures.

Date

2006

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

C. S. Cai

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.4117

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