Non-Destructive Evaluation of
Concrete
Outline
• Causes of failure of concrete structures
• Need for inspection of damaged structures
• Discussion of various methods
Visual investigation
Rebound and penetration tests
Thermal techniques
Radiography
Electromagnetic techniques
Dye penetration
Stress wave propagation methods
Maturity method
• Summary
Failure of concrete structures
Common causes of failure
• Design issues
• Manufacturing damage (latent defects)
• Service-induced damage
Design issues
• Miscalculated loads
• Insufficient factors of safety
• Lack of foresight into environmental
effects; Improper choice of materials for the
service condition
• Assumption of ‘No Damage’ condition!
Manufacturing damage – some examples
• Poor surface quality
• Lack of adequate cover to rebars
• Improper detailing of rebars
• Poor quality control
• Lack of adequate length of curing
• Improper consolidation – honeycombing
• Cold joints
Service-induced damage
• Normal wear and tear
• Chemical attack and internal durability problems
• Corrosion of rebars
• Creep and shrinkage-related deformations
• Fatigue cracking
• Overloading / unexpected loading
• Foreign object damage
Manifestation of damage
• Dissolution and loss of material
• Softening and associated strength loss
• Expansion and related cracking
• Loss of strength and structural integrity
Nature of damage
• Most damage due to durability problems occurs in
the cover region of reinforced concrete; the
cracking is also mostly parallel to the surface of
concrete
• Interior defects are primarily associated with load-
related effects, as well as with improper
consolidation
• Surface cracking, spalling, and scaling common
Delamination of
cover zone concrete Surface deterioration in
sulfate attack
Surface map-cracking due to alkali-
Freeze-thaw scaling silica reaction
Need for inspection
With timely inspections and repair, the service life of the structure
can be prolonged
Need for inspection
• Inspections are necessary for servicing
ailing infrastructure
• Remaining life can be assessed
• Strategy for repair and rehabilitation can be
decided depending on the extent of damage
Non-destructive evaluation of
concrete structures
The most important test!
Visual inspection! •A trained inspector can
make good use of his eye
•80% of all inspections are
visual
•Even when other tests are
used, visual inspections are
always performed
Visual Aids
• Telescopes, Borescopes, Magnifying lenses,
Real-time video
• Borescopes – Rigid, flexible, and video-
assisted
• Limitations of visual methods – only
surface cracks, low reliability, needs good
lighting, human factors critical!
Rebound/Penetration Tests
• Schmidt rebound hammer: Measures the
elastic rebound from the surface of a
material (mainly used for concrete);
correlated empirically to strength
• Windsor probe: Shot into the concrete at a
given force; depth of penetration indicates
level of concrete strength
Rebound tests – some lab results
40
Data shows lot of
35
scatter
30
Very difficult to use it
Stress in concrete (MPa)
25
20
for quantitative
15
prediction
10
Good tool for
5 monitoring quality over
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
a given region of the
Rebound number
structure
Electromagnetic techniques
Eddy current techniques Magnetic particle techniques
•Discontinuities cause •Magnetic particles align
disturbances in the along cracks in the
applied electric field; direction of the magnetic
detected by an indicator field
•Surface technique only •Also a surface technique
Only useful for metallic (conductive and magnetic) elements
EM technique for reinforced concrete
Dye penetration
Dye mixed with hardening epoxy poured
onto the surface of cracked material
After the
epoxy sets, a
cut section is
studied under
an optical
microscope
For a truly ND test, special dyes are used to cover the
surface, and observed under black (UV) light to
observe the cracks. This is often done for metal parts.
Stress Wave Propagation
Methods
Sounding, Ultrasonic pulse velocity,
Pulse-echo, Acoustic Emission,
Spectral Analysis of Surface Waves
Stress Wave Propagation Techniques
Sounding
The quality of sound produced
by just striking the surface of
Intact concrete concrete with a hammer can
reveal information about damage
Intact concrete – ringing sound
Cracked concrete – drummy
Cracked concrete sound
Other popular technique – Chain
drag
Pulse Velocity Technique (UPV)
Principle is that the speed of travel of the sound
wave depends on the density and stiffness (or
modulus of elasticity) of the material
From a measurement of the time taken by the
pulse to travel, the dynamic modulus of elasticity
of the material can be determined
L
v = L/t = f(E/ρ)
t, E, ρ
Transmitter Receiver
Object
UPV Techniques
Direct Semi-direct
Indirect
Three modes of testing
Use of the indirect method
Variation of UPV with stress levels in
concrete
100
day 1
Variation of pulse
90 day 7
day 28 velocity with stress
80
70
level has been
plotted; as the stress
% of ultimate stress
60
50 gets closer to the
40 ultimate stress, the
30
pulse velocity shows
20
10
a sharp decline due
0
to the increase in
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Pulse velocity (m/s)
3500 4000 4500 5000
cracking
Application: Basic material characterization;
assessment of damage level in structures
Use of indirect method
M1 - Day 1
350
300
y = 5.7453x
R2 = 0.9904
250
Pulse time (microseconds)
Determination of
200
150
pulse velocity by
100
indirect method
50
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Distance between transducers (cm)
m = 5.7453 s/cm Pulse velocity V = 10000/5.7453 m/s =
1741 m/s
Advantage: No need for two-sided access
Comparison of methods
6000
5000
Direct
y = 272.17Ln(x) + 3456.7
R2 = 0.8636
4000
Semi-direct
Comparison of
Pulse velocity (m/s)
y = 268.34Ln(x) + 3355.1
R2 = 0.5432 direct, semi-direct,
3000
Indirect
y = 284.78Ln(x) + 2041.2
and indirect
R2 = 0.821
2000 methods
1000
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Age (days)
UPV for fresh concrete
Dynamic modulus of concrete
Steel plates (of mould) can be devolved from the overall
pulse velocity and the velocity
through steel, treating the system
as a composite material, and
using appropriate mixture laws
Application: Determination of
Concrete setting time and strength gain
characteristics
Pulse-echo Method
Pulse generated on the surface is reflected back by
any discontinuities or cracks within the material
Transmitter/ Receiver If total depth is
Receiver known, a
comparison of the
travel times can
indicate the crack
location
Pulse can also be generated by an impact source –
Impact-echo method
Use of pulse-echo
MB – Main bang, FE – Flaw echo, BE (BE1 and BE2) – Back echo
Pulse-echo for fresh concrete
As concrete hardens, more of
Steel plate the sound energy will get
transmitted; in the fresh state,
most of the energy will be
reflected from the steel-
concrete interface
Concrete inside mould
Problems – Interference by
bleed water
Applications: Determination
of setting and strength gain
of concrete
Limitations of ultrasonic methods
• High attenuation of sound waves due to the
presence of air voids in concrete; hence,
deep defects are not easy to find
• Low frequencies only can be used
resolution is compromised
• Interference in results from the aggregates
and reinforcement heterogeneity of
concrete is a problem!
Maturity Method
Maturity concept
Temperature (oC)
Maturity (oC-hrs)
Time (hrs) Time (hrs)
Maturity is the area under the temperature-time curve for a
hydrating concrete. It can then be related empirically to strength
Methodology
• Temperature measurement of hardening
concrete is done using thermocouples
• A datalogger records the data, which can be
analyzed on a computer to get the
temperature history
• Maturity is calculated from temperature
history and correlated experimentally with
compressive strength
Applications
• Detecting setting and strength gain for:
- removal of formwork
- opening of sections to loads
• The technique has been used successfully in
the USA for fast-track repair of concrete
pavements, to ascertain the strength level of
the concrete
