Acoustic emission characters of Glass fibre reinforced polymer stay cable

Usually the stay cables of bridge are made of metal, but that cost lot of maintenance expense. Corrosion of chemistry attacks and fatigue damage can both deteriate the mechanical performance of the stay cables. By adopting advanced material to adapt the extremely harsh environment, research groups in Harbin Institute of technology (HIT) suggested that the GFRP (Glass fibre reinforced polymer) cables can be one suitable choice. This article introduced the acoustic emission (AE) monitoring system into the test for GFRP stay cab les. During the destructive test, the damage propagation of the cable can be seen clea rly from the AE sensed monitor. Additionally, critical prewarning mechanism was suggested by lim iting AE signal amplitudes inside the monitoring system. Another application for identifying damage location at the length direction of the cable was adopted innovatively It can help figure out which cable at which location overtake the stress level at the real time, the advice suggested by the AE monitoring system can help making decision to mend or change cables. These GFRP material manufactured cables were tested under the Material Test System and finally processed with the assistant of computer science programming.