Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
Dokumenttyp
- Zeitschriftenartikel (76) (entfernen)
Schlagworte
- Ultrasound (26)
- Concrete (19)
- Non-destructive testing (12)
- Monitoring (9)
- Coda wave interferometry (7)
- Radar (5)
- Deconvolution (4)
- Imaging (4)
- Ultraschall (4)
- Zerstörungsfreie Prüfung (4)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
Paper des Monats
- ja (2)
Coda wave interferometry is a recent analysis method now widely used in seismology. It uses the increased sensitivity of multiply scattered elastic waves with long travel-times for monitoring weak changes in a medium. While its application for structural monitoring has been shown to work under laboratory conditions, the usability on a real structure with known material changes had yet to be proven. This article presents experiments on a concrete bridge during construction. The results show that small velocity perturbations induced by a changing stress state in the structure can be determined even under adverse conditions. Theoretical estimations based on the stress calculations by the structural engineers are in good agreement with the measured velocity variations.
After some river embankment failures during recent floods in Germany, major investigation and improvement programs for river embankments have been implemented. Presently, the investigation mainly relies on existing documentation, visual inspection, and drilling and sampling. Geophysical techniques, which are applied non-destructively from the surface, have the potential to cover the gaps between sampling points and to enhance the reliability of subsurface information. This paper describes the evaluation results for resistivity, electromagnetic, seismic and GPR techniques acquired at a test site along the Mulde River in eastern Germany. The work was carried out under the government funded project DEISTRUKT. Each geophysical method has its own specific advantages and limitations. Keeping the requirements posed by current German guidelines for river embankments in mind, 2–D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is the method of first choice. However, all geophysical results have to be calibrated carefully using information, such as material properties and depth of structures, determined from boreholes. Although some recommendations are provided here, a set of detailed recommendations have been compiled in a handbook.
The low-strain pile integrity testing method is used for quality control of new piles as well as length and integrity check for old piles. If no other methods for calibration are available, the accuracy and reliability of the techniques depend on a good estimation of the elastic wave velocity. In practice it is assumed that piles can be tested 7 days after casting and that the velocity is almost constant in all piles of one kind in a construction project. Recent measurements at the BAM test site in Horstwalde, Germany, showed that the 7 day criterion is not generally applicable.
Ultrasonic echo and transmission techniques are used in civil engineering on a regular basis. New sensors and data processing techniques have lead to many new applications in the structural investigation as well as quality control. But concrete structures in the nuclear sector have special features and parameters, which pose problems for the methods and instrumentation currently available, e.g. extreme thickness, dense reinforcement, steel liners or special materials. Several innovative ultrasonic techniques have been developed to deal with these issues at least partly in lab experiments and pilot studies. Modern imaging techniques as multi-offset SAFT have been used e. g. to map delaminations. Thick concrete walls have successfully been inspected, partly through a steel liner. Embedded ultrasonic sensors have been designed which will be used in monitoring networks of large concrete structures above and below ground. In addition, sensitive mathematical methods as coda wave interferometry have been successfully evaluated to detect subtle changes in material properties. Examples of measurements and data evaluation are presented.
Moisture ingress is one of the major deteriorating factors for building materials. Today, the only approved way to assess such damage is the gravimetric Darr method, which is essentially destructive. Substantial progress has been made using the geophysical complex-resistivity method, which can be applied non-destructively and provides spatial information along two-dimensional sections, rather than punctual along one borehole. Considerable advantages of complex resistivity are its sensitivity to textural properties, as well as the pore-fluid chemistry of wet, porous media. In a comprehensive laboratory study, and later in field scale experiments, it could be shown that complex resistivity may even be able to distinguish between salt content and saturation degree in a single measurement. A comparison with complementary nondestructive testing techniques points to the benefit and further research to be explored in multimethodical approaches.
This article presents a unique method of installing a special type of embedded ultrasonic transducers inside a 36-m-long section of an old bridge in Germany. A small-scale load test was carried out by a 16 ton truck to study the temperature and load influence on the bridge, as well as the performance of the embedded transducers. Ultrasonic coda wave interferometry technique, which has high sensitivity in detecting subtle changes in a heterogeneous medium, was used for the data evaluation and interpretation. The separation of two main influence factors (load effect and temperature variation) is studied, and future applications of wave velocity variation rate Φ for structural health condition estimation are discussed. As a preliminary research stage, the installation method and the performance of the ultrasonic transducer are recognized. Load- and temperature-induced weak wave velocity variations are successfully detected with a high resolution of 10−4%. The feasibility of the whole system for long-term structural health monitoring is considered, and further research is planned.
Moisture ingress is one of major damaging factors for masonry buildings. As the complex resistivity (CR) is sensitive to textural properties as well as to the pore fluid chemistry of wet porous media, its non-destructive application can provide helpful information for conservators. In a comprehensive laboratory study it has been shown that CR might even be able to distinguish between salt content and saturation degree in only one measurement. The combined use of electrical and electromagnetic measurement techniques in two field-scale flooding experiments has shown some unexpected differences. Possible reasons are discussed and it is shown that bringing together the information of both methods leads to a clearer picture.
The capabilities of non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for defect detection in civil engineering are characterized by their different penetration depth, resolution and sensitivity to material properties. Therefore, in many cases multi-sensor NDT has to be performed, producing large data sets that require an efficient data evaluation framework. In this work an image fusion methodology is proposed based on unsupervised clustering methods. Their performance is evaluated on ground penetrating radar and infrared thermography data from laboratory concrete specimens with different simulated near-surface defects. It is shown that clustering could effectively partition the data for further feature level-based data fusion by improving the detectability of defects simulating delamination, voids and localized water. A comparison with supervised symbol level fusion shows that clustering-based fusion outperforms this, especially in situations with very limited knowledge about the material properties and depths of the defects. Additionally, clustering is successfully applied in a case study where a multi-sensor NDT data set was automatically collected by a self-navigating mobile robot system.
This paper reviews state-of-the-art in nondestructive testing (NDT) and semidestructive testing (SDT) methods applicable for imaging the condition of structural timber. Both NDT and SDT imaging reveal defects, damages, and decay, while the extent of wood decay can also be quantified. Combined with an appropriate data interpretation concerning the internal defects, the mechanical properties of the material can also be assessed. The possibilities and limitations of the most relevant individual NDT and SDT methods, also in combination with each other, are outlined and compared. To facilitate comparison, many observations are reported based on the same test specimen.
Processing ultrasonic data by coda wave interferometry to monitor load tests of concrete beams
(2018)
Ultrasonic transmission measurements have been used for decades to monitor concrete elements, mostly on a laboratory scale. Recently, coda wave interferometry (CWI), a technique adapted from seismology, was introduced to civil engineering experiments. It can be used to reveal subtle changes in concrete laboratory samples and even large structural elements without having a transducer directly at the place where the change is taking place. Here, several load tests until failure on large posttensioned concrete beams have been monitored using networks of embedded transducers. To detect subtle effects at the beginning of the experiments and cope with severe changes due to cracking close to failure, the coda wave interferometry procedures had to be modified to an adapted step-wise approach. Using this methodology, we were able to monitor stress distribution and localize large cracks by a relatively simple technique. Implementation of this approach on selected real structures might help to make decisions in infrastructure asset management.
"INFRASTAR aims to develop knowledge, expertise and skills for optimal and reliable management of structures. The generic methodology is applied to bridges and wind turbines in relation to fatigue offering the opportunity to deal with complementary notions (such as old and new asset management, unique and similar structures, wind and traffic actions) while addressing 3 major challenges: 1/ advanced modelling of concrete fatigue behaviour, 2/new non destructive testing methods for early aged damage detection and 3/probabilistic approach of structure reliability under fatigue. Benefit of cross-experience and inter-disciplinary synergies creates new knowledge. INFRASTAR proposes innovative solutions for civil infrastructure asset management so that young scientists acquire a high employment profile in close dialogue between industry and academic partners. Modern engineering methods, including probabilistic approaches, risk and reliability assessment tools, will take into account the effective structural behaviour of existing bridges and wind turbines by exploiting monitored data. Existing methods and current state-of -the art is based on excessive conservatism which produces high costs and hinders sustainability. INFRASTAR improves knowledge for optimising the design of new structures, for more realistic verification of structural safety and more accurate prediction of future lifetime of the existing structures. That is a challenge for a sustainable development because it reduces building material and energy consumption as well as CO2 production. Within the global framework of optimal infrastructure asset management, INFRASTAR will result in a multi-disciplinary body of knowledge covering generic problems from the design stage process of the new civil infrastructures up to recycling after dismantlement. This approach and the proposed methods and tools are new and allow a step forward for innovative and effective process."
In this study, an Impulse Response Function analysis of pile response to sine-sweep excitation by a low cost, portable Shaker was used to identify defects in piles. In straightforward impact-echo methods, echoes from the pile toe and defects are visible in the time domain measurements. However, these echoes are not present in the time domain records of piles subjected to sine-sweep excitations, due to interactions between the input and output signals. For this reason, the impulse response function in the time domain has been calculated and is able to identify the echoes from pile impedance changes. The proposed methodology has been evaluated both numerically and experimentally. A one-dimensional pile-soil interaction system was developed, and a finite difference method used to calculate the pile response to sine-sweep excitation. The numerical simulations indicate that impulse response measurements with a synthesized logarithmic, sine-sweep excitation could be an effective tool for detecting defects in piles. The methodology was further tested with field trials on 6 cast in situ concrete test piles including 1 intact pile and 5 defective piles subjected to sine-sweep excitations by a shaker. In 5 of the 6 cases the echoes from the pile toe could be identified in the deconvoluted waveforms—the impulse Response functions. Damage detection is more difficult and dependent on the selection of the optimal regularization parameter. Further research and optimization of the deconvolution process is needed to evaluate the effectiveness compared to standard pile integrity testing methods.
The ultrasonic echo technique is a frequently used method in non destructive testing for geometry Determination of concrete building elements. Important tasks are thickness measurements as well as the localization and characterization of built-in components and inhomogeneities.
Currently mainly the synthetic aperture focusing family of techniques (SAFT) is used for imaging. These algorithms have difficulties in imaging steeply dipping interfaces and complicated structures such as steps and lower boundaries of voids. As an alternative two geophysical migration methods, pre-stack Kirchhoff depth migration and pre-stack Reversetimemigration (RTM)were tested in this paper at a reinforced concrete foundation slab. The slab consists of various reinforcement contents, different thicknesses and two pile heads.
In a first step, both methods were evaluated with synthetic 2D data. In the second step, ultrasonic measurement data recorded with shear wave transducers on a line profile on the foundation slab were processed. The use of an automatic scanner simplified the measurements. A comparison of the geophysical migration results with those of SAFT shows, in particular for RTM, a significant improvement in the Imaging of the geometry of the foundation slab. Vertical borders were reconstructed and the location and structure of the lower boundary of the foundation slab were reproduced better. Limitations still exist in imaging the piles below the slab.
Time reversal techniques are used in ocean acoustics, medical imaging, seismology, and non-destructive evaluation to backpropagate recorded signals to the source of origin. We demonstrate experimentally a technique which improves the temporal focus achieved at the source location by utilizing deconvolution. One experiment consists of propagating a signal from a transducer within a concrete block to a single receiver on the surface, and then applying time reversal or deconvolution to focus the energy back at the source location. Another two experiments are run to study the robust nature of deconvolution by investigating the effect of changing the stabilization constant used in the deconvolution and the impact multiple sources have upon deconvolutions focusing abilities. The results show that we are able to generate an improved temporal focus at the source transducer using deconvolution while maintaining the robust nature of time reversal. Additionally, deconvolutions costs are negligible due to it being a preprocessing step to the recorded data. The technique can be applied for detailed investigation of the source mechanisms (e.g. cracks) but also for monitoring purposes.
Seismische Methoden, die mithilfe elastischer Wellen Informationen über den Untergrund liefern, spielen in der Baugrunderkundung eine immer größere Rolle. Die einschlägigen Regelwerke weisen zwar auf diese Methoden hin, geben aber keine näheren Hinweise zu Methodenauswahl oder Einsatzbereichen. Das neue Merkblatt B08 'Seismische Baugrunderkundung', das seit Kurzem bei der DGZfP (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zerstörungsfreie Prüfung) online und gedruckt auf Deutsch und Englisch erhältlich ist, will diese Lücke schließen. Die Grundlagen der Seismik werden kurz und knapp beschrieben, ebenso wie die zahlreichen Einzelmethoden mit ihren Anwendungsmöglichkeiten und Grenzen. Dabei wird sowohl auf Anwendungen von der Erdoberfläche aus wie auch auf Bohrlochmethoden und Offshore-Techniken eingegangen. Eine Applikationsmatrix hilft bei der Methodenauswahl. Hinweise zu Ausschreibungen fehlen ebenso wenig wie Maßnahmen zur Qualitätssicherung. Das Merkblatt richtet sich an alle, die seismische Messungen zur Baugrunderkundung ausschreiben oder anbieten bzw. mit den Ergebnissen arbeiten.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Information on methods, applications, contracting and quality assurance: Seismic methods, which are acquiring information about the subsurface using elastic waves, are more and more used in site investigation. These techniques and their fields of application are mentioned in standards and regulations but not described or explained in detail. The new guideline B08 'Site Investigation by Seismic methods' has been published by DGZFP (German Society for Non-Destructive Testing) recently and is available in print and online in German and English. Basic concepts of seismic exploration are described shortly as well as the numerous techniques including fields of application and limitations. This includes surface, borehole and offshore methods. Hints on fields of application are given in a matrix like structure. Comments on tendering and bidding are included as well as measures for quality assurance. This guideline is for all, who need or offer geophysical services.
Crosshole sonic logging (CSL) can be used to determine the quality of joints in a diaphragm wall. Tests conducted on laboratory models have provided reference information for interpretation of field data. During two large construction projects, CSL has been implemented for quality control of diaphragm walls. The field experiences have shown the benefits of the tests and the predictive value of the reference measurements.
Diaphragm walls are used to provide a stable and water-tight confinement for the construction of tunnels, underground railway stations, deep basements and other structures requiring deep excavations. These walls consist of individual panels, cast piece-wise in the ground, separated by water-tight joints. There are several methods to improve the water tightness of these joints, including rubber bands, metal sheets or precast concrete elements. In most cases, diaphragm walls perform very well. Quality problems, which occur in a few occasions, may be due to uncontrolled concrete flow between the joints, unexpected geological conditions or poor workmanship. Different methods of quality assurance are applied on construction sites. Sonar instruments can be used in a bentonite-filled trench to evaluate the shape of the excavation. An improved prototype instrument has been developed, including digital data-processing features, which allow the detection of even small anomalies at the stop-end surface before concreting the adjacent panel. The sonar sensor can be used in depths up to 200 m. Model experiments show that a centimetre resolution can be achieved. Set-up, model experiments and their results are shown. The prototype might be the basis of an easy-to-use commercial device.
The assessment of Coda Wave Interferometry (CWI) and Distributed Fiber Optics Sensing (DFOS) techniques for the detection of damages in a laboratory size reinforced concrete beam is presented in this paper. The sensitivity of these two novel techniques to micro cracks is discussed and compared to standard traditional sensors. Moreover, the capacity of a DFOS technique to localize cracks and quantify crack openings is also assessed. The results show that the implementation of CWI and DFOS techniques allow the detection of early subtle changes in reinforced concrete structures until crack formation. With their ability to quantify the crack opening, following early detection and localization, DFOS techniques can achieve more effective monitoring of reinforced concrete structures. Contrary to discrete sensors, CWI and DFOS techniques cover larger areas and thus provide more efficient infrastructures asset management and maintenance operations throughout the lifetime of the structure.
Data science (digitalisation and artificial intelligence) became more than an important facilitator for many domains in fundamental and applied sciences as well as industry and is disrupting the way of research already to a large extent. Originally, data sciences were viewed to be well-suited, especially, for data-intensive applications such as image processing, pattern recognition, etc. In the recent past, particularly, data-driven and physics-inspired machine learning methods have been developed to an extent that they accelerate numerical simulations and became directly usable for applications related to the nuclear waste management cycle. In addition to process-based approaches for creating surrogate models, other disciplines such as virtual reality methods and high-performance computing are leveraging the potential of data sciences more and more. The present challenge is utilising the best models, input data and monitoring information to integrate multi-chemical-physical, coupled processes, multi-scale and probabilistic simulations in Digital Twins (DTw) able to mirror or predict the performance of its corresponding physical twins. Therefore, the main target of the Topical Collection is exploring how the development of DTw can benefit the development of safe, efficient solutions for the pre-disposal and disposal of radioactive waste. A particular challenge for DTw in radioactive waste management is the combination of concepts from geological modelling and underground construction which will be addressed by linking structural and multi-physics/chemistry process models to building or tunnel information models. As for technical systems, engineered structures a variety of DTw approaches already exist, the development of DTw concepts for geological systems poses a particular challenge when taking the complexities (structures and processes) and uncertainties at extremely varying time and spatial scales of subsurface environments into account.