Techniques for monitoring water-retaining earth structures are currently limited in their capacity to detect seepage-induced internal erosion (e.g. suffusion) in its early stages, or before serious damage
has occurred. Acoustic emission (AE) is widely used in many industries for non-destructive assessment of materials and systems, but despite its advantages it is seldom used in geotechnical engineering as the AE generated by particulate materials is highly complex and difficult to measure
and interpret. This project aims to develop the interpretation of AE generated by seepage-induced internal instability phenomena. A continuous, real-time AE early warning system for detecting seepage erosion mechanisms and processes will enable safety-critical decisions to be made. Laboratory testing with a large permeameter apparatus is being used to characterise and quantify the
AE generated by the hydromechanical behaviour of a range of internally unstable soils. Initial results show that key processes such as the internal movement of particles can be measured and interpreted using AE.
Funding
Tiago Biller gratefully acknowledges
the support of a Loughborough University
School of Architecture, Building and Civil
Engineering studentship for his doctoral work, and Alister Smith gratefully acknowledges the support of an EPSRC Fellowship (EP/P012493/1).
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
15th BGA Young Geotechnical Engineers Symposium (YGES)
Citation
BILLER, T., SMITH, A. and DIXON, N., 2018. Early detection of seepage-induced internal erosion using acoustic emission monitoring. Presented at the 15th BGA Young Geotechnical Engineers Symposium (YGES), University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, 2-3 July 2018.
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/