Abstract: “Wave propagation based automatic structural health monitoring techniques and the warning-alert systems are widely adopted in aerospace and nuclear industry. These techniques are however, not in a matured state of development for civil structures and are evolving. Hence research in this area is of paramount importance. This paper deals with axial wave propagation in concrete beam with structural dis-continuities. Dis-continuity (impedance mismatch) is induced in the beam by varying its cross section area along its length. Numerical simulations are performed using the spectral finite element method (SFEM) and compared with experimental studies conducted on four different concrete beams using instrumentation for Pulse echo configuration and Pitch catch configuration methods.”

Keywords: Wave propagation, Spectral finite element method, damage detection