Evaluating the impact of aggregate size and reinforcement on alkali-silica reaction in concrete through nondestructive testing techniques

This research investigates different nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods to assess concrete under alkali-silica reaction (ASR) development. Four methods including acoustic emission (AE), ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), crack width measurement, and strain measurement were applied to reactive and control specimens under accelerated ASR conditioning. The innovation lies in using NDE methods to monitor concrete with varying aggregate sizes, quantifying method sensitivity through measured indices, and highlighting the effectiveness of each method to capture ASR development. The results indicate that the unconfined reactive fine-aggregate sample exhibited isotropic expansion, while coarse-aggregate specimens showed around 50 % greater longitudinal expansion and AE cumulative signal strength up to 3.2 times higher. Furthermore, the reinforcing effect was more significant in the reactive coarse aggregate samples compared to the reactive fine aggregate ones. The ASR detection effectiveness for the four methods is 67 % for AE, 51 % for strain measurement, 12 % for crack width measurement, and 1 % for UPV. • Conducted over 200 days of ASR experiments in a laboratory setting. • Utilized four NDE methods to evaluate ASR in six concrete specimens. • Investigated the impact of different aggregate sizes and boundary conditions. • Compared and analyzed the effectiveness of four NDE methods.