Using Acoustic Emission to monitor fatigue damage and healing in Asphalt Concrete

This paper presents an Acoustic Emission (AE) characterization of damage accumulation and strength recovery in Asphalt Concrete (AC) mixture. A series of uniaxial tensile cyclic tests with and without rest period has been conducted on a 19 mm nominal maximum size of aggregate (NMSA) AC at 20°C. During the fatigue tests, key AE parameters including emission counts were acquired from two piezo-type sensors attached to the middle of a 150 mm high, 75 mm diameter cylindrical specimen. Test results indicate that accumulative AE energy and AE count may be used not only to assess the initiation and propagation of fatigue damage, but also to quantify the beneficial effect of rest period on the performance of AC. The frequency-amplitude analysis shows that crack formations coincide with the peaks of maximum AE amplitude (Amax) with higher frequencies, while healing is best described by Amax with lower frequencies during the rest periods. In addition, it is demonstrated that the Kaiser effect, the stress dependence of AE generation, does not hold for fatigue in AC.

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