Diffuse ultrasound monitoring of stress and damage development on a 15-ton concrete beam.

This paper describes the use of an ultrasonic imaging technique (Locadiff) for the Non-Destructive Testing & Evaluation of a concrete structure. By combining coda wave interferometry and a sensitivity kernel for diffuse waves, Locadiff can monitor the elastic and structural properties of a heterogeneous material with a high sensitivity, and can map changes of these properties over time when a perturbation occurs in the bulk of the material. The applicability of the technique to life-size concrete structures is demonstrated through the monitoring of a 15-ton reinforced concrete beam subject to a four-point bending test causing cracking.

Locating and characterizing a crack in concrete with diffuse ultrasound: A four-point bending test.

This paper describes an original imaging technique, named Locadiff, that benefits from the diffuse effect of ultrasound waves in concrete to detect and locate mechanical changes associated with the opening of pre-existing cracks, and/or to the development of diffuse damage at the tip of the crack. After giving a brief overview of the theoretical model to describe the decorrelation of diffuse waveforms induced by a local change, the article introduces the inversion procedure that produces the three dimensional maps of density of changes. These maps are interpreted in terms of mechanical changes, fracture opening, and damage development.

Self-referenced and single-ended method to measure Brillouin gain in monomode optical fibers.

We present a new self-referenced and single-ended method to measure the Brillouin-gain coefficient in monomode optical fibers accurately with high reliability. Our comparative measurements on several different fibers show that a fiber with a smaller optical effective mode area can nevertheless have a higher Brillouin threshold, thus confirming the significance of acousto-optic effective mode area.