| Concrete deteriorates over time due to environmental changes and/or poor construction processes which can eventually lead to partial or total failure of a structure. Deterioration in concrete manifests itself in different forms such as: freeze and thaw, chemical attack, surface and internal flaws.;Concrete and shotcrete linings are widely used as support systems in underground excavations. Surprisingly, a fragmented, damaged shotcrete support system can actually create a less stable environment than the unsupported rock mass.;Detection of internal flaws remains a difficult task as they are not always observable on the surface. Yet, the potential to expand and cause damage to the structure is omnipresent. The focus of this work is to locate and characterize two main and common features in concrete structures, (1) sub-horizontal cracks; (2) rock-concrete interfaces.;Traditionally, this has been difficult to detect by currently available NDT methods. To obtain high resolution images of cracks in concrete, an extension of the ultrasonic nondestructive technique known as Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT) has been used. However, in order to achieve our research objective, we developed a modified SAFT code in this work. The results of this study demonstrate that the resolving power of our modified 3D SAFT algorithm can provide an accurate profile of both a rock-concrete interface and/or cracks with angles varying from 5 to 15 degrees within concrete slabs having thicknesses of up to twenty centimetres. |
