Size Effect on the Acoustic Emission Behavior of Textile-Reinforced Cement Composites

Acoustic emission (AE) is applied for the structural health evaluation of materials. It commonly uses piezoelectric sensors to detect elastic waves coming from energy releases within the material. Concerning cementitious composites as well as polymers, AE parameters have proven their potential to not only detect the existence of a defect, its location and the fracture mode, but also the developing strain field even before visible damage evolves. However, the wave propagation distance, wave dispersion due to plate geometry, heterogeneity and reflections result in attenuation and distortion of the AE waveforms. These factors render the interpretation more complex, especially for large samples. In this study, the effect of wave propagation on plain glass textile-reinforced cement (TRC) plates is investigated. Then, curved plates with different widths are mechanically loaded for bending with concurrent AE monitoring. The aim is to evaluate to what extent the plate dimensions and propagation distance influence the original AE characteristics corresponding to a certain fracture mechanism.