Analysis of damage characteristics of steel fiber-reinforced concrete based on acoustic emission

Steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) has been widely used as a building material worldwide. The macroscopic destruction of this material is a manifestation of the internal microdamage evolution. Hence, investigating the internal damage evolution process in concrete for monitoring in-service concrete has considerable significance in terms of safety. This study investigates the damage characteristics of SFRC with different steel fiber contents (0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 kg/m³) using Brazilian disk splitting tests and acoustic emission (AE) techniques. The changing trend of the characteristic parameters (counts and energy, respectively) of AE signals throughout the failure process of concrete is analyzed. Then, the moment tensor method is used to determine the temporal and spatial evolution of microcracks in SFRC. Research results show that the AE characteristic parameters are closely related to the internal damage of concrete specimens, and show different characteristics of AE signals in different failure stages. When the matrix cracks, the AE counts become denser, the values increase sharply, and the energy is closely related to fiber content (the lower the fiber content, the higher the energy value, and the minimum AE energy is 1.80e5 aJ (in SFRC60)). According to the moment tensor method, the cumulative microcracks are first appear to near the central axis and then dispersed to the surrounding area in the SFRC with the effect of steel fiber, effectively weakening the local damage. Based on the R-value method, the proportion analysis results of microcracks show that tensile damage is the primary destruction mechanism throughout the failure process of the Brazilian disk. The minimum proportion for tensile microcracks is 56.67%.