Concrete damage diagnosed by using non-classical nonlinear acoustic method

It is known that the strength of concrete is seriously affected by damage and cracking. In this paper, six concrete samples under different damage levels are studied. The experimental results show a linear dependence of the resonance frequency shift on strain amplitude at the fundamental frequency, and approximate quadratic dependence of the amplitudes of the second and third harmonics on strain amplitude at the fundamental frequency as well. In addition, the amplitude of the third harmonics is shown to increase with the increase of damage level, which is even higher than that of the second harmonics in samples with higher damage levels. These are three properties of non-classical nonlinear acoustics. The nonlinear parameters increase from 10⁶ to 10⁸ with damage level, and are more sensitive to the damage level of the concrete than the linear parameters obtained by using traditional acoustics methods. So, this method based on non-classical nonlinear acoustics may provide a better means of non-destructive testing (NDT) of concrete and other porous materials.