In this work, the acoustic emission (AE) technique is used to evaluate the fracture process of corroded and healthy reinforced concrete (RC) beams subjected to a monotonic bending test. In fact, many researchers have conducted laboratory experiments considering different conditions to perform rebar corrosion monitoring in RC structures using the AE method. However, previous studies have not investigated the evolution of the bending performance of RC beams at different corrosion degrees, considering the interaction of single rebar with concrete. In this study, healthy and electrically corroded RC beams are evaluated, considering different corrosion levels. The analysis of the moving average of the AE maximum amplitudes was consistent to distinguish four stages of mechanical behavior that the healthy, and corroded specimens with low and medium corrosion levels of 0.9% and 3.2% experienced up to failure. Three damage stages were identified in the case of a high corrosion level of 9.3%. Then, the AE maximum amplitudes were suitable to establish an efficient clustering, which enabled the classification of the fractures into minor, medium, and major classes. Furthermore, the digital analysis method proposed in this study was suitable to visually reveal the influence of the preexisting corrosion-induced damages on the bending failure process of the RC beams.
Keywords: acoustic emission; bending test; electrical corrosion; location analysis; reinforced concrete beam.