Monitoring the stress level of concrete structures with CODA wave interferometry: Experimental illustration of an investigated zone

Abstract

The use of Coda Wave Interferometry (CWI) to Non Destructively assess concrete structures is an emerging topic. CWI has recently been proposed to determine the stress level of in situ pre-stressed concrete structure as well as to monitor damage of concrete material. The idea is using ultrasonic waves with a wavelength similar to the aggregate size to be in the diffusive regime, and so to probe very small changes of the material. The velocity change is of the order of 0.1% for classical concrete under a 10MPa strain which can be measured with CWI. This velocity variation can be linked to the stress level modification by Murnaghan's theory. While CODA theory and experiments are emerging in the civil engineering NDT laboratory, it becomes relevant in parallel to know what is actually the investigated zone for, in fine, relating the velocity changes to a given distribution of stress or damage as a function of depth in in situ condition. In this paper we show an experiment that illustrates the existence of an investigated zone in a concrete beam of 0.8 m x 0.2 m x 0.1 m. © RILEM 2013.