Non-Destructive Technique for Defect Localization in Concrete Structures based on Ultrasonic Wave Propagation

Concrete structures require periodic inspections and quality control to assess their structural integrity. For this task several methodologies based on different technologies have been previously proposed. In particular, Non-Destructive Techniques, based on the use of ultrasonic wave propagation, have revealed attractive due to the possibility to perform reliable assessments of concrete structures. In this paper a method exploiting ultrasonic propagation characteristics is proposed. The aim of the method consists of determining the position of a defect by the computation of flight times related to signals reflected by anomalies in the structure. Such computation is based on a preliminary classification of defect positions that combines a genetic algorithm for a feature selection and a statistical approach for classification. The performances of the proposed method are evaluated in a specific case study, showing satisfactory numerical results, which show that this approach can be used to identify the position of small sized defects.