Laboratory Acoustic Emission Investigation of Full Size ASTM A-588 Bridge Beams

Experimental results from the full size welded beams and small specimens indicated the possibility of detection of fatigue cracks at early stage of life, before they reach a critical size. It was noticed that signal peak amplitude level of a growing fatigue crack in weldments is higher than those in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of acoustic emission 1985-10, Vol.4 (2-3), p.S307-S310
Main Authors: Ghorbanpoor, A, Vannoy, D W
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Experimental results from the full size welded beams and small specimens indicated the possibility of detection of fatigue cracks at early stage of life, before they reach a critical size. It was noticed that signal peak amplitude level of a growing fatigue crack in weldments is higher than those in the base metal. It was also indicated that the peak frequency value for a fatigue crack will shift towards a lower level as crack becomes larger in size. Further, it was shown that frequency range of 100-300 kHz is a suitable working range for AE monitoring of A-588 steel beams. Fatigue crack detection with high degree of reliability at early stage of life requires that the detecting transducers be placed at a close distance to the crack. This is due to the higher attenuation rate of the high frequency components of fatigue crack signals at early stage of life. Results of this study demonstrates that AE may be a powerful non-destructive evaluation technique in bridge application. 6 ref.--AA
ISSN:0730-0050