Mechanical properties and damage characteristics analysis on recycled aggregate concrete with glazed hollow beads after high temperatures by acoustic emission method

This research investigates the effect of high temperature on the mechanical and acoustic emission properties of recycled aggregate concrete with glazed hollow beads (GHB-RAC). Uniaxial compression tests were conducted on GHB-RAC at varying recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) substitution rates and glazed hollow beads (GHB) contents, and acoustic emission (AE) technology was used to monitor the compression-induced damage throughout the testing process. This study delves into the mechanical properties and damage characteristics of GHB-RAC when exposed to fire. The findings reveal that AE characteristic coefficients aptly delineate the three-stage nature of axial compression damage in concrete at temperatures up to 400 °C. However, these stage-specific traits vanish at temperatures exceeding 400 °C. Additionally, through the analysis of AE signals at different temperatures, the compression damage process is elucidated based on the b-value method. The RA-AF analysis indicates that the number of shear cracks exhibits an increasing trend with increasing temperature, and an increment in GHB dosage positively influences the percentage of tensile cracking during loading, with the influence being more significant at 70% GHB content. The acoustic emission sensing can accurately detect and localise damage. With the increase in temperature, the distribution of AE signals depicting concrete damage is more dispersed and the number of AE signals is more larger. Notably, the incidence of localized damage points diminishes with a higher GHB ratio, indicating the efficacy of GHBs in mitigating thermal damage to the concrete. Furthermore, a damage constitutive model incorporating variables such as temperature, GHB dosage, and recycled coarse aggregate replacement rate was proposed. The model employed AE energy count parameters as the damage indicator. The good fitting results suggest that the mechanics behavior of GHB-RAC under uniaxial compression can be well described by the model. Consequently, the study offers invaluable insights into the damage evolution of post-fire recycled aggregate concrete with GHB admixtures.