Acoustic Emission and Related Non-destructive Evaluation Techniques in the Fracture Mechanics of Concrete: Fundamentals and Applications, Second Edition presents innovative Acoustic Emission (AE) and related non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques that are used for damage detection and inspection of aged and deteriorated concrete structures. This new edition includes multi-modal applications such as DIC, thermography, X-ray and in-situ implementations, all of which are helpful in better understanding feasibility and underlying challenges. This new edition is an essential resource for civil engineers, contractors working in construction, and materials scientists working both in industry and academia. - Completely updated, with a new chapter on multi-technique damage monitoring - Presents new applications and novel technologies on AE and related NDT in the fracture mechanics of concrete - Features contributions from recognized world-leaders in the application of acoustic emission (AE) and NDE techniques used for the damage assessment of concrete and concrete structures

This book offers a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of the most widely used test methods for characterizing the deformation and failure behavior of materials. It presents a thorough treatise on mechanical testing, providing a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, and students seeking to understand the mechanical properties and performance of materials across various applications. The book is organized into ten chapters dedicated to specific test methods including tensile, compression, bending, torsion, multiaxial, indentation, fracture, fatigue, creep, high strain rates, nondestructive evaluation, ensuring a thorough examination of each technique's principles, procedures, and applications. It features two special chapters focusing specifically on the mechanical characterization of concrete and fiber composite materials. These chapters delve into the unique aspects and challenges associated with testing and analyzing these specific materials.

Acoustic Emission (AE) techniques have been studied in civil engineering for a long time. The techniques are recently going to be more and more applied to practical applications and to be standardized in the codes. This is because the increase of aging structures and disastrous damages due to recent earthquakes urgently demand for maintenance and retrofit of civil structures in service for example. It results in the need for the development of advanced and effective inspection techniques. Thus, AE techniques draw a great attention to diagnostic applications and in material testing. The book covers all levels from the description of AE basics for AE beginners (level of a student) to sophisticated AE algorithms and applications to real large-scale structures as well as the observation of the cracking process in laboratory specimen to study fracture processes.

The Special Issue “Non-Destructive Testing of Structures” has been proposed to present the recent developments in the field of the diagnostics of structural materials and components in civil and mechanical engineering. The papers highlighted in this editorial concern various aspects of non-invasive diagnostics, including such topics as the condition assessments of civil and mechanical structures and the connections of structural elements, the inspection of cultural heritage monuments, the testing of structural materials, structural health monitoring systems, the integration of non-destructive testing methods, advanced signal processing for the non-destructive testing of structures (NDT), damage detection and damage imaging, as well as modeling and numerical analyses for supporting structural health monitoring (SHM) systems.

The book explores the two opposite natural trends of composite systems: (i) order and structure emerging from heterogeneity and randomness, and (ii) instability and chaos arising from simple nonlinear rules. Providing insights into the rapidly growing field of complexity sciences, the book focuses on the role of complexity in fracture mechanics. It firstly discusses the occurrence of self-similarity and fractal patterns in deformation, damage, fracture, and fragmentation of heterogeneous materials and the apparent scaling of the nominal mechanical properties of disordered materials, as well as of the time-to-failure after fatigue and creep loading. Then the book addresses criticality in the acoustic emissions from damaged structures and tectonic faults. Further, it examines the snap-back instability in the structural behavior of relatively large composite structures in the framework of catastrophe theory, and lastly describes the transition toward chaos in the dynamics of cracked elements.

The book presents in a clear, simple, straightforward, novel and unified manner the most used methods of experimental mechanics of solids for the determination of displacements, strains and stresses. Emphasis is given on the principles of operation of the various methods, not in their applications to engineering problems. The book is divided into sixteen chapters which include strain gages, basic optics, geometric and interferometric moiré, optical methods (photoelasticity, interferometry, holography, caustics, speckle methods, digital image correlation), thermoelastic stress analysis, indentation, optical fibers, nondestructive testing, and residual stresses. The book will be used not only as a learning tool, but as a basis on which the researcher, the engineer, the experimentalist, the student can develop their new own ideas to promote research in experimental mechanics of solids.