Acoustic Emission Characteristics of Frost-Damaged Concrete under Compressive Loading

Abstract

Freezing and thawing behavior are among the most important factors when determining the durability of engineering structures in cold regions. A kind of acoustic emission (AE) sensor was tailored to evaluate the freezing-thawing characteristics of concrete. The AE test results show that, under uniaxial compression loading, the concrete not experiencing freezing-thawing cycles has a little ring down count (RDC) at the initial loading stage, which then increases because of the appearance of amounts of damage cracks at the later loading period. The AE characteristics of the concrete after freezing-thawing under compressive loading were analyzed. The results show that RDC in the first 100 s of loading is little, which increases suddenly with loading. The RDC and accumulative ring down count of the concrete with different freezing-thawing cycles show the decreasing trend, and the maxima of the accumulative energy decreases with increasing the freezing-thawing cycles.