The carbon intensity of cement production motivates new techniques for concrete construction. These include functional layering, in which multiple concrete mixes are used to cast a single element. For functional layering to be adopted in practice, it is first necessary…
The carbon intensity of cement production motivates new techniques for concrete construction. These include functional layering, in which multiple concrete mixes are used to cast a single element. For functional layering to be adopted in practice, it is first necessary to understand how material behaviour and damage mechanisms are affected by this construction approach. In this paper, Acoustic Emission (AE) signals from pencil lead break tests are studied for a set of single- mix and layered concrete slabs. For the single-mix slabs, the findings demonstrate the influence of mix design on AE parameters and attenuation in concrete. Parameter variation in a horizontally layered slab is then predicted, using fitted models of behaviour from the single-mix slabs. These predictions agree best with measurement data in regions where most of the material under consideration is the higher-attenuating mix. When this is not the case, agreement is poorer, suggesting that the presence of the interlayer boundaries may give rise to other wave phenomena which influence AE attenuation.