Fracture monitoring of reinforced reactive powder concrete beam elements utilizing acoustic emission technique
Makaleler > Tam Makale · 2026
Yazarlar: Setenay Sürmelioğlu, Cihat YÜKSEL, Ninel ALVER
REVISTA DE LA CONSTRUCCION, SCI Expanded İndekslerine Giren Dergi, Uluslararası, Wos, 2026, cilt 25, ss 1-1
Özet
Reactive powder concrete (RPC) is a high-performance concrete that contains very high amount of binder. With increase in the structural use of RPC, recognition and standardization of its mechanical and fracture behavior are needed. Although many studies have been conducted on material development, studies investigating bending behavior and fracture mechanism of reinforced RPC beams are limited. Acoustic emission (AE) technique can provide information on development and motion of cracks under load and significant amount of work has been conducted to characterize damage process of conventional (normal-strength) concrete. This study focuses on the research gaps regarding AE based fracture monitoring of large scale (125x250x1500 mm) reinforced RPC beams. Mechanical and acoustic emission tests were systematically and comprehensively evaluated in order to link AE indices to ductility and failure mode of structural beams incorporating three different steel reinforcement details. According to the findings, the instances where the average frequency decreases and the AE energy increases represent significant damage in the beams. The more ductile RPC beam generates a greater number of micro-cracks releasing low acoustic emission energy with low amplitude values. Even in the cases where the RPC beams showed a general shear-type failure, steel fibers retard the development of macro-cracks and thus, contribute to a more ductile behavior, which is justified by the resultant gradual increases in AE graphs. Long duration AE activities were observed when the fracture mechanism turned into a brittle performance. The critical points in the graphs representing the major changes in energy, average frequency, duration, and amplitude with elapsed time are following each other.