Early-age concrete strength development monitoring using piezoelectric self-emission and detection (SED) and coda wave energy (CWE)

Abstract

Abstract The property of concrete is very significant to structural safety, and the early hydration process plays a critical role in the final concrete property. This paper develops a self-emission and detection (SED) principle with a single piezoelectric smart aggregate (SA) transducer, which is used as both an actuator and a sensor, to monitor the concrete early age strength development. The signal analysis is carried out by the coda wave energy (CWE). Experiments of concrete specimens with and without the SAs were conducted. Experimental results show a high correlation between the strength of early-age concrete and the CWE and non-linear fitting is used to establish the relationship between them. The proposed CWE features a simple analysis method, and the SED principle does not require consideration of the matching between the transmitting transducer and the receiving sensor, such as frequency range, sensitivity. Furthermore, the proposed method can be used as a reference for health monitoring of other structures and has good application prospects.