A simple microwave method to assess the uniformity of steel fiber distribution in the SFRC

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a simple microwave non-destructive method to assess the uniformity of fiber distribution in the steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC). To simplify the assessment, only the amplitude attenuation information is needed, but no phase information is required. The assessment can be achieved by means of the relationship between the attenuation constant and the quantity of steel fibers per unit volume in the SFRC, which is deduced based on the Maxwell–Garnett mixing rule and the Clausius–Mossotti formulation. A measurement system based on two horn antennas in a transmission arrangement is built to analyze a real building wall for the verification of the proposed method. In addition, the cosine similarity index is proposed to confirm the validity of the experiment. The obtained results imply that the presented method is effective and simple to assess the uniformity of fiber distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-destructive testing
• attenuation constant
• microwave imaging
• steel fibers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zi-Kai Yang

Zi-Kai Yang was born in Shandong, China, in 1992. He received the B.E. degree in the School of Information Engineering from Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, China, in 2015. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Microelectronics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. His current research interests include radar system and measurement algorithms.

Zhao Li

Zhao Li was born in Shandong, China, in 1994. He received the B.E. degree in the College of Information Science and Engineering from Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China, in 2017. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the School of Microelectronics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. His current research interests include radar system and measurement algorithms.

Sheng Zhao

Sheng Zhao was born in Shanxi, China, in 1991. He received the B.E. degree in the School of Information and Communications Engineering from Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China, in 2013. He received the M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree from Tianjin University in 2015 and 2019, respectively. His current research interests include radar system and energy harvesting.

Xiang-Dong Huang

Xiang-Dong Huang was born in 1979. He is currently a professor in the School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. He received the M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree from Tianjin University in 2004 and 2007 respectively. In 2009, he was in the University of Hong Kong as a visiting scholar. In 2011, he was in the University of Macau as a Research assistant. In 2013, he was in the University of Delaware as a visiting scholar. His research interests include filter design, and spectral analysis.