Ultrasonic tomography in concrete Tomografia ultrassônica em concreto

The application of the ultrasonic pulse velocity method for internal flaw identification in concrete members has been gaining importance in the last years. This non destructive method has benefits, but also presents some limitations, especially in the field of representation of the results. The goal of this paper is to improve the representation of the results with the application of the computational tomography technique. This technique allows to better locate internal flaws by a tomographic image called tomogram. A tomogram exhibits flaw position within the sectional planes of the analyzed concrete members. International researchers agree that the ultrasonic tomography technique has great potential to be used in the investigation of internal sections of concrete members as well as to identify internal flaws. The experiments performed in this work endorse this statement.