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Published on: October 19, 2022
Acoustic evaluation of concrete delaminations using ball-chain impact excitation
Hongbin Sun1, Jinying Zhu1, Suyun Ham2
1Department of Civil Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Omaha, Nebraska 68182, USA hbsun@unl.edu, jyzhu@unl.edu.
Abstract:
This letter presents an automated acoustic sensing device for rapid detection of delamination in concrete. The device consists of ball-chains for continual impact excitation and multi-channel microphones for acoustic sensing. A ball-chain is formed by multiple metal balls connected by flexible ropes and is dragged on concrete surface to excite vibration of delaminations. Compared to the conventional chain drag test, the ball-chain generates acoustic signals with higher signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) because the balls give isolated but continual impacts on concrete surface during dragging. The proposed method was validated on a concrete specimen with artificial delaminations.
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