Time reverse modeling of acoustic emissions in a reinforced concrete beam

The time reverse modeling (TRM) is applied for signal-based acoustic emission (AE) analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) specimens. TRM uses signals obtained from physical experiments as input. The signals are re-emitted numerically into a structure in a time-reversed manner, where the wavefronts interfere and appear as dominant concentrations of energy at the origin of the AE. The experimental and numerical results presented for selected AE signals confirm that TRM is capable of localizing AE activity in RC caused by concrete cracking. The accuracy of the TRM results is corroborated by three-dimensional crack distributions obtained from X-ray computed tomography images.