Predicting the Time to Failure in Heavily Loaded Masonry Specimens with the Acoustic Emission Technique

This paper presents the results of a research project in which the knowledge on testing of creep damage in masonry and acoustic emission (AE) monitoring are combined. Results from different types of creep tests are combined to investigate whether AE monitoring could predict the failure time of the masonry specimens. In previous work, it was observed that the AE event rate is related to the time to failure of the specimen. Processing of the results of new tests enables to update the previously found relation between AE event rate and failure time and to indicate a confidence interval for predictions made with this model. Additionally, the question can be raised whether temporary monitoring could detect unstable damage accumulation and predict failure. Therefore, the results of long-term creep tests are analysed and compared with data from strain monitoring. The results indicate that in most cases, the failure can be predicted.