The acoustoelastic effect in prestressing tendons

There are currently more than 130,000 prestressed concrete bridges in the United States and approximately 37,000 of these bridges are more than 30 years old. Steel tendons that are pre-tensioned to counteract the effect of design loads are critical to structural performance of these bridges. However, there are currently no accepted nondestructive evaluation techniques to evaluate the condition of these tendons. The goal of this research was to examine ultrasonic stress measurement techniques for the condition assessment of prestressing tendons. Acoustoelastic measurements were made in prestressing rods and strands, and constants are reported that relate the change in ultrasonic velocity to the change in stress. The effects of dispersion in prestressing tendons, which act as circular wave guides for ultrasonic waves, are evaluated. Factors that could effect the design of a practical sensor are examined, including temperature dependence, effect of varying boundary conditions, and the variation in acoustoelastic properties between typical materials produced by different manufacturers. It is concluded that several of these factors have a larger effect on the ultrasonic velocities than stress. Therefore, it may be impractical to design a sensor system to measure absolute stress, but measurement of stress changes from a known initial condition may be possible under certain circumstances.