An attempt has been made to study experimentally the fracture process in plain concrete beams using b-value analysis of Acoustic Emission (AE) signals. It is well known that stress waves released during the fracture process in materials are known as…
An attempt has been made to study experimentally the fracture process in plain concrete beams using b-value analysis of Acoustic Emission (AE) signals. It is well known that stress waves released during the fracture process in materials are known as acoustic emissions. We carried out three point bend tests on plain concrete beams and AE produced during the fracture of notched three point bend (TPB) plain concrete beam specimens have been used to compute the b-values. The b-value based on Gutenberg-Richter formula is calculated from the frequency-amplitude plots for incremental ranges of the monotonically applied load, while in literature the same is studied under cyclic loading. The concrete specimens were tested by Material Testing System (MTS) of 1200kN capacity by Crack Mouth Opening Displacement (CMOD) control at the rate of 0.0004mm/sec following RILEM - Réunion Internationale des Laboratoires d'Essais et de Recherches sur les Matériaux et les Constructions (The International Union of Testing and Research Laboratories for Ma- terials and Structures) recommendations. The 28-day compressive strengths of concrete cubes were 77.9 MPa, 63.7 MPa and 60.5 MPa. The observations done in the present experimental study have some important applications for monitoring the integrity of structures.