Application of peridynamics in the simulation of acoustic emission in quasi-brittle materials

Resumo

The acoustic emission (AE) technique consists in capturing the internal mechanical waves produced by
materials due to changes such as chemical reactions, cracks, dislocations, among others, that propagates for the
surfaces of the structure and are captured by sensors distributed on these surfaces generating the AE events. This
methodology has been used to monitor the damage of real structures, allowing predicting when an event of greater
magnitude could mean the imminence of a total or partial collapse. In addition, the technique of acoustic emission
allows extracting information from structures formed by quasi-brittle materials where the succession of
instabilities has a pattern of behavior can be established. The interpretation of acoustic emission tests is not trivial
and the simulation of this type of test can complement the information about the experimental test performed.
Aligned with the topic mentioned here, in the present work, an acoustic emission test on concrete specimens is
simulated. To perform the numerical simulations, a version of the discrete element method called peridynamics
was used. The results show that the peridynamic theory is a powerful tool and can be used to help in the planning
and interpretation of experimental results from the monitoring of structures.