Acoustic emission signal characteristics of damage accumulation in non‐buckling steel plate shear wall. (13th September 2017) - Sun, Feifei
ABSTRACT: This paper deals with acoustic emission (AE) monitoring of non‐buckling steel plate shear walls, in order to estimate damage accumulation of steel plate walls under cyclic loading. When material or any internal element in steel members develops plasticity or crack begins to form and grow rapidly, a large amount of energy will be released quickly within a short period. This would produce a series of transient stress waves, which is called AE signals. AE signals of the overall process contain useful information of irreversible accumulated damage in structural fatigue fracture progression. Continuous monitoring of low cycle fatigue plastic damage accumulation in steel plate walls is demonstrated in a corrugated‐shape steel plate wall under cyclic loading. Using the laboratory test data, the relationship between AE signals and fatigue damage accumulation in steel plate walls have been studied. It is revealed that the AE hit counts and energy can be used as one of the reference standards for judging the degree of plastic damage accumulation of material. AE damage accumulation evaluation based on AE hit and AE energy is a promising method for damage evaluation of steel hysteretic damping member. Compared with other conventional damage evaluation methods, it provides a new nondestructive testing approach to quantify the plastic damage of material, and it can be used to evaluate the member condition that are difficult to access.