Guided ultrasonic waves for non-destructive monitoring of the stress levels in prestressed steel strands

The safety of prestressed civil structures such as bridges, dams, nuclear power plants, etc. directly involves the security of both environment and users. Health monitoring of the tensioning components, such as strands, tendons, bars, anchorage bolts, etc. is an important research topic and a challenging task bringing together the non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and civil engineering communities. This paper deals with a guided ultrasonic wave procedure for monitoring the stress levels in seven-wire steel strands (15.7 mm in diameter). The mechanical and geometrical characteristics of the prestressed strands were taken into account for optimizing the measurement configuration and then the choice of the guided ultrasonic mode at a suitable frequency. Simplified acoustoelastic formulations were derived from the acoustoelasticity theory according to either calibration test or in situ measurement. The results from acoustoelastic measurements on the seven-wire steel strands are presented and discussed in the case of calibration tests and industrially prestressed strands. They show the potential and the suitability of the proposed guided wave method for evaluating the stress levels in the tested seven-wire steel strands.