Compressive Strength Forecasting of Air-Entrained Rubberized Concrete during the Hardening Process Utilizing Elastic Wave Method

• Main Authors: Zhi Heng Lim, Foo Wei Lee, Kim Hung Mo, Jee Hock Lim, Ming Kun Yew, Kok Zee Kwong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-10-01
• Series: Crystals
• Subjects: compressive strength; non-destructive test (NDT); elastic wave; air-entrained rubberized concrete
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4352/10/10/912

Conventional compressive strength test of concrete involves the destruction of concrete samples or existing structures. Thus, the focus of this research is to ascertain a more effective method to assess the compressive strength of concrete, especially during the hardening process. One of the prevalent non-destructive test (NDT) methods that involves the employment of elastic wave has been proposed to forecast the compressive strength development of air-entrained rubberized concrete. The change of the properties, such as wave amplitude, velocity and dominant frequency of the wave that propagates within the concrete is investigated. These wave parameters are then correlated with the compressive strength data, obtained using the conventional compressive strength test. It has been certified that both correlation between wave amplitude and concrete compressive strength, as well as the correlation between velocity and concrete compressive strength, have high regression degrees, which are 0.9404 and 0.8788, respectively. On the contrary, dominant wave frequency has been proved imprecise to be used to correlate with the concrete compressive strength development, as a low correlation coefficient of 0.2677 is reported. In a nutshell, the correlation data of wave amplitude and velocity could be used to forecast the compressive strength development of an air-entrained rubberized concrete in the future.