Lamb waves for detecting delamination between steel bars and concrete

Won Bae Na, Tribikram Kundu, Mohammad R. Ehsani

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

67 Scopus citations

Abstract

The feasibility of detecting interface degradation and separation of steel bars in concrete beams using Lamb waves is investigated in this paper. The Lamb wave can propagate a long distance along the reinforcing steel bars embedded in concrete as the guided wave and is sensitive to the interface bonding condition between the steel bar and the concrete. The traditional ultrasonic methods for inspecting defects in concrete use reflection, transmission, and scattering of longitudinal waves by internal defects. These methods are good for detecting large voids in concrete, but they are not very efficient for detecting delamination at the interface between concrete and steel bars. In this study, a special coupler between the steel bar and ultrasonic transducers has been used to launch nonaxisymmetric guided waves in the steel bar. This investigation shows that the Lamb wave inspection technique is an efficient and effective tool for health monitoring of reinforced concrete structures.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)58-63
Number of pages6
JournalComputer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering
Volume18
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2003

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Civil and Structural Engineering
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Lamb waves for detecting delamination between steel bars and concrete'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this