Use of early acoustic emission to evaluate the structural condition and self-healing performance of textile reinforced cements

Textile reinforce cements (TRC) are innovative materials that are used for repair of existing structures or recently as stand-alone lightweight structural members. Fracture and thermal behavior of these materials are very complicated due to multiple failure modes. The undergoing processes cannot be described by the simple constitutive equation. In this perspective the contribution of monitoring techniques is crucial. Acoustic emission (AE) is used to check the behavior of TRC beams and plates in different states of structural health: intact, thermally pre-cracked and self-healed by polymer powder. This is the first time that the AE behaviors of intact, cracked and self-healed TRC laminates are compared in literature.