DefinePK

Abstract

This paper presents damage inspection of reinforced concrete (RC) beam wrapped with carbon fibre sheet (CFS) using parameters of acoustic emission (AE) signals based on signals strength. RC is easily exposed to damage due to successive load. Hence, inspection of RC structures is vital to ensure the lifespan of the structure is fully controlled and safe. In doing so, experimental work on nine experiments on nine RC beams of 150 mm x 150 mm x 750 mm was carried out. The beam was subjected to three-point loading in conjunction with AE technique. Four AE sensors were set at selected position on the beam surface. The main aims of this study are to observe the crack propagation of the RC beam and to evaluate the crack development of control RC beam, RC beam wrapped with CFS in one layer and RC beam wrapped with CFS in two layers when subjected to increasing static loading. Three RC beams were statically loaded to failure and the remaining six beams were tested under increasing static loading. The increasing static loading were based on seven loading phases of 0.1Pult (Phase 1) to 0.7Pult (Phase 7). The inspection was based on the visual inspection of the crack development for each load phase and the relationship between signal strength and X-location. It is found that the signal strength against X-location generated good correlation for damage assessment of RC beam wrapped with CFS.