Patrik Fröjd

Frequency selection for coda wave interferometry in concrete structures

HIGHLIGHTSRecommendations as to choice of frequency for CWI in concrete are provided.50–150 kHz signals can be used to find sub‐aggregate sized holes in concrete.50–150 kHz signals can track development of microcracks in concrete.Higher frequency signals limit possible transmission range significantly.Lower frequency signals cannot be used to find such small damage to concrete. ABSTRACT This study contributes to the establishment of frequency recommendations for use in coda wave interferometry structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for concrete structures. To this end, codas with widely different central frequencies were used to detect boreholes with different diameters in a large concrete floor slab, and to track increasing damage in a small concrete beam subjected to bending loads. SHM results were obtained for damage that can be simulated by drilled holes on the scale of a few mm or microcracks due to bending. These results suggest that signals in the range of 50–150 kHz are suitable in large concrete structures where it is necessary to account for the high attenuation of high‐frequency signals.

Continuous wave measurements in a network of transducers for structural health monitoring of a large concrete floor slab

Local, superficial damage was detected and localized on an 8 × 2-m concrete floor slab using a structural health monitoring system. A total of 30 piezoelectric transducers, placed in a grid, transmitted and received continuous ultrasonic waves that were measured using a lock-in amplifier. Tomography was used to create images from the measured amplitude and phase of the continuous waves between all possible transducer pairs. The location of damage induced by impact hits was visible in the resulting images. The signals could easily be detected even between the most distant transducer pairs, indicating the possibility of monitoring even very large concrete structures.

Efficiency of some voice coil transducers in low frequency reciprocal operations.

The feasibility of using different voice coil transducers in applications with reciprocal transducers of mechanical waves is investigated. It was speculated that voice coil transducers could be a more efficient alternative to piezoelectric transducers in low frequency ranges. Five different voice coil transducers, originally constructed for either transmission or reception, were characterized in both modes of operation. A piezoelectric ceramic disk was used for comparison between the transducer types. The results show that voice coils indeed can function as reciprocal transducers and that the most sensitive of the evaluated transducers is more efficient than the piezoelectric disk for low frequencies.

Detecting damage events in concrete using diffuse ultrasound structural health monitoring during strong environmental variations

Diffuse ultrasonic wave measurements used in structural health monitoring applications can detect damage in concrete. However, the accuracy is very susceptible to environmental variations. In this study, a large concrete floor slab was monitored using diffuse wave fields that were generated by continuous-wave transmissions between ultrasonic transducers. The slab was monitored for several weeks while being subjected to changes in environmental conditions. Subsequently, it was damaged using impact hits, resulting in centimeter-scale cracking. The variations caused by the environment masked the effects of the damage in the measurements. To address this issue, the Mahalanobis distance was used to distinguish between the influence of the damage and the influence of the environmental variations. The Mahalanobis model uses amplitude and phase measurements of continuous waves at a set of different frequencies as inputs. A moving window approach was applied to the baseline data set to account for slow trends. This study shows that this technique greatly suppresses most of the variations caused by environmental conditions. All damage events in our data set have been detected.