Acoustic emission source mechanisms for steel bridge material

Abstract

Over the past twenty years acoustic emission (AE) has been studied for applications to the structural health monitoring (SHM) of metallic structures. The success of AE for prognosis of in-service steel bridges depends on the reliability of the received AE signals. The emphasis of this paper is on the characterization of acoustic emission source mechanisms for ASTM A572 grade 50 steel. The source characterization was aided by Digital Imaging Correlation (DIC) and Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM). The results indicate that both ductile and brittle mechanisms can produce AE during fatigue crack growth in the steel. However, the fracture mechanisms are predominately ductile. A key preliminary finding is that fatigue crack extension does not generally produce AE events in the early stage of fatigue crack growth for the steel bridge material investigated.