Abstract
Concrete condition-assessing penetrometers need to be able to distinguish between making contact with a hard (concrete) surface as opposed to a semi-solid (corroded concrete) surface. We investigated whether different shaped tips of a cylindrical penetrometer were better than others at maintaining contact with concrete and not slipping. We designed a range of simple symmetric tip shapes, controlled by a single superellipse parameter. We performed a finite element analysis of these parametric models in SolidWorks before machining in stainless steel. We tested our penetrometer tips on a concrete paver cut to four angles at 20 increments. The results indicate that the squircle-shaped tip had the least slippage when used for concrete condition assessment.
Highlights
We introduced a novel approach to sewer concrete pipe condition assessment using semi-automated penetration testing [15,16], which involves driving an instrumented rod into a material of interest
We investigated the ability of our stainless steel penetrometer tips to maintain contact with concrete at different incident angles using an Instron 5980 Test Machine
We show the results of our experiments for our penetrometer tips, reporting each tip and angle combination
Summary
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