Quantitative Assessment of Damage in Cementitious Beams via Acoustic Emission Technique (AET)

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a deeper understanding of degradation mechanisms in concrete, mortar, and cement-paste beams subjected to mechanical loading, through the application of the Acoustic Emission Technique (AET). To this end, displacement-controlled three-point bending tests were conducted on three notched beams of identical shape and dimensions. The objective was to establish correlations between damage modes observed during each loading cycle and the corresponding AE activity. For data analysis, a background noise filtering technique was first applied to the raw AE signals collected during testing. The filtered signals were then subjected to a clustering process using the k-means algorithm to categorize them into distinct groups based on their characteristics. Following this, damage classification was performed on the filtered data using the RA method, providing insight into the nature and evolution of damage within the beams.