Nondestructive Testing of Prestressed Bridge Girders with Distributed Damage

Four different nondestructive tests were evaluated for detecting and quantifying the amount of distributed damage in prestressed concrete bridge girders. This was in response to a number of bridges throughout Texas exhibiting premature concrete deterioration due to a combination of delayed ettringite formation and alkali silica reaction.

Visual inspection, acoustic emission, short pulse radar, and impact echo are described, and possible procedures to apply these methods to concrete with distributed damage are presented and evaluated.