Statistical analysis of acoustic emissions generated during unconfined uniaxial compression of cementitious materials

Abstract

The article reports a study on the ‘goodness of fit’ of Weibull and Normal (Gaussian) distributions on the compressive strength and the corresponding Acoustic Emissions (AE) of cementitious materials. An attempt has been made to understand the variation of the parameters of the Weibull distribution and the Gaussian distribution carried out on the uniaxial compressive strength data and the corresponding recorded AE parameters. The statistical analysis of ‘Damage Parameter’ based on the peak amplitude of AE signals was also carried out. It was observed that the Weibull distribution was a better fit than Gaussian distribution for compressive strength and damage parameter. But in the case of AE parameters, Gaussian distribution was a better fit. The results obtained from this statistical study may be an addition to the existing knowledge on the statistical approach of AE associated with cementitious materials. A statistical approach may be suitable in predicting the data values without conducting further experiments. The results may be useful to understand the variation of physical properties such as homogeneity and ductility with the variation of compressive strength of cementitious materials and its corresponding AE parameters.