50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”

September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

TIME DOMAIN ULTRASONIC WAVE PROPAGATION

SIMULATION IN CONCRETE USING EXPLICIT DYNAMIC
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
Oscar Victor Antonio, Jr., Sohichi Hirose, and Alan T. Tan
ABSTRACT: In ultrasonic nondestructive testing for concrete, it is very important to understand
the ultrasonic wave propagation and the scattering process in order to make reliable evaluation
of safety and serviceability of structures. Since concrete is a highly non-homogeneous material,
interpretation of ultrasonic test results is considered a challenging task. In this paper, time
domain simulation of ultrasonic wave propagation in concrete was studied using the explicit
dynamic finite element method. A section of a concrete slab was modeled as a five-phase 2-D
model composed of cement paste, aggregates, steel reinforcing bar, aluminum pipe and air voids.
The model considers the ultrasonic wave scattering from different inclusions in concrete and
compared with actual experimental data. The numerical simulations show the ultrasonic wave
diffusion in concrete caused by the changes in acoustic impedance within the concrete interior.
The explicit method is especially well-suited for solving high-speed dynamic events that require
many small increments to obtain a high-resolution solution. The use of small increments,
dictated by the stability limit, is advantageous since it allows the solution to proceed without
iterations and tolerances and without requiring tangent stiffness matrices to be formed. The
explicit dynamic finite element method is, therefore, computationally attractive for problems
where the total dynamic response time that must be modeled is only a few orders of magnitude
longer than the stability limit such as for wave propagation problems.

KEYWORDS: ultrasonic, nondestructive testing, explicit dynamic finite element method

1. INTRODUCTION

In ultrasonic nondestructive testing for concrete, it is very important to understand the ultrasonic
wave propagation and the scattering process in order to make reliable evaluation of safety and
serviceability of structures. Since concrete is a highly non-homogeneous material, interpretation
of ultrasonic test (UT) results is considered a challenging task. In concrete ultrasonic testing, an
ultrasonic pulse is generated by exciting a piezoelectric material with a high-amplitude, transient
electrical pulse from a high-voltage, and high current pulser. The short burst of ultrasonic energy
is transmitted into the concrete and impinges upon various interfaces within the concrete. The
change in acoustic impedance at the various interfaces causes some portions of the input energy
to reflect or echo back to the surface (REMR, 1991). These energy reflections are then received
and converted back to electrical pulse as waveform data. However, these received waveforms are
almost always characterized by several oscillations (multi-mode arrival times) due to the
reflections from various scatterers within the concrete. Reflections from these multiple scatterers
make the interpretation of the waveform very difficult which, sometimes, may lead to wrong
evaluation or make it meaningless. Most of the time concrete is produced in the field with very
limited quality control. Also, the grain size distribution is highly variable and the properties of
the constituent materials are greatly varied. Moreover, the presence of coarse aggregate, often
exceeding 10 millimeters in diameter, requires that ultrasonic testing in concrete be conducted at
relatively low frequencies in order to avoid excessive attenuation caused by scattering
(Buyukozturk , 1998).
The system of equations for a dynamic finite element method (DFEM) model can either be
solved using Implicit Method or Explicit Method. In an implicit method, the system of equations
are solved simultaneously to obtain the values for the unknown acceleration (and stress). Implicit
finite element method requires that the system of equations is solved at the end of each solution
increment. Also, implicit method do not place an inherent limitation on the time increment size

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 50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”
September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

(increment size is generally determined from accuracy and convergence considerations). Implicit
simulations typically take orders of magnitude fewer increments than explicit simulations.
However, since a global set of equations must be solved in each increment, the cost per
increment of an implicit method is far greater than that of an explicit method. In contrast to the
implicit method, an explicit method does not require solving a simultaneous system of equations
or the calculation of a global stiffness matrix. Instead, the solution is advanced kinematically
from one increment to the next. Explicit methods require small time increment size that depends
solely on the highest natural frequencies of the model and is independent of the type and duration
of loading. Simulations generally take on the order of 10,000 to 1,000,000 increments, but the
computational cost per increment is relatively small (Dassault Systemes).
In this research, a time domain simulation of ultrasonic wave propagation through highly
inhomogeneous media such as concrete was studied using the explicit dynamic finite element
method (EDFEM) and was implemented in ABAQUS 6.7.
2. EXPLICIT DYNAMIC FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

The explicit dynamic analysis procedure is based on the implementation of the central difference
rule to integrate the equations of motion explicitly through time, that is, using the kinematic
conditions at one increment to calculate the kinematic conditions at the next increment. At the
beginning of the increment, the program solves for dynamic equilibrium, which states that the
nodal mass matrix, M, times the nodal acceleration, u , equals the net or total nodal forces (the
difference between the external applied forces, P, and internal element forces, I) (Dassault
Systemes)
M u = P − I . (1)
The accelerations at the beginning of the current increment (time t) are calculated as

u (t ) = (M ) ⋅ (P − I ) (t ) .
−1
(2)

Solving for the accelerations is trivial, meaning there are no simultaneous equations to solve,
since the explicit procedure always uses a diagonal, or lumped, mass matrix. The acceleration of
any node is determined completely by its mass and the net force acting on it, thus making the
nodal calculations very inexpensive.
The accelerations are then integrated through time using the central difference rule, which
calculates the change in velocity assuming that the acceleration is constant. This change in
velocity is added to the velocity from the middle of the previous increment ( t) to determine the
velocities at the middle of the current increment as shown in Eq. (3).

u (t + Δt ) = u (t − Δt ) +
(Δt(t + Δt ) + Δt (t ) )
u (t ) (3)
2 2 2
Finally, the velocities are integrated through time and added to the displacements at the
beginning of the increment to determine the displacements at the end of the increment

u (t + Δt ) = u (t ) + Δt (t + Δt ) u (t + Δt ) . (4)

Thus, satisfying dynamic equilibrium at the beginning of the increment provides the
accelerations. Knowing the accelerations, the velocities and displacements are advanced
“explicitly” through time. The term “explicit” refers to the fact that the state at the end of the

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 50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”
September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

increment is based solely on the displacements, velocities, and accelerations at the beginning of
the increment. This method integrates constant accelerations exactly. For the method to produce
accurate results, the time increments must be quite small so that the accelerations are nearly
constant during an increment.

The explicit procedure integrates through time by using many small time increments. The central
difference operator is conditionally stable, and the stability limit for the operator (with no
damping) is given in terms of the highest eigenvalue in the system as

(5)

In ABAQUS, a small amount of damping is introduced to control high frequency oscillations. If

the effect of damping is considered in the analysis, then the equation for the stable time
increment is given by

(6)

where is the fraction of critical damping in the highest mode. Contrary to our usual engineering
intuition, introducing damping to the solution reduces the stable time increment.

The time incrementation scheme in ABAQUS is fully automatic and requires no user
intervention. The software uses an adaptive algorithm to determine conservative bounds for the
highest element frequency. An estimate of the highest eigenvalue in the system can be obtained
by determining the maximum element dilatational mode of the mesh. The stability limit based
upon this highest element frequency is conservative in that it will give a smaller stable time
increment than the true stability limit that is based upon the maximum frequency of the entire
model. In general, constraints such as boundary conditions and contact have the effect of
compressing the eigenvalue spectrum.

3. SIMULATION OF WAVE PROPAGATION IN CONCRETE SLAB

3.1 Geometry of the model

In this study, a concrete slab with the following dimensions: L = 800mm, H = 200mm, W =
500mm, was used to demonstrate the use of the Explicit Dynamic Finite Element Method for
simulating 2-D ultrasonic wave propagation in concrete. The concrete slab has a 25.4 mm
diameter steel reinforcing bar and a 25.4 mm diameter aluminum pipe embedded at its mid
height as shown in Figure 1. The concrete slab was modeled as a five-phase 2-D model
composed of cement paste, aggregates, steel reinforcing bar, aluminum pipe and air voids. All of
these components were individually drawn to scale before the mesh was generated.

100 mm Steel rebar Aluminum pipe

100 mm

250 mm 300 mm 250 mm

Figure 1. Concrete slab cross-section

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 50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”
September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

3.2 Material properties

In order to create a relatively accurate two-dimensional model of the concrete slab specimen, the
input material constants should be close enough, if not the same, with the actual material
properties. Table 1 shows the summary of the material properties for the different components of
the model. It should be noted that the properties for the cement paste (mortar) were obtained
experimentally using 4 samples.

Table 1. Material properties for the concrete slab

Material E (Mpa) (kg/m3)

Cement paste 26823.8 0.234 2283.4
Aggregates 39517.7 0.211 2632.0
Steel rebar 198803.0 0.241 7820.0
Aluminum pipe 65405.0 0.311 2700.0

3.3 Input signal

For the simulation, pulse waves were excited by introducing pressure loads at the different
transmitter locations on the top surface of the concrete slab model. These pulse waves were
radiated with uniform distribution along the transducer width of 55 mm. Normalized input signal
from the actual ultrasonic test record was used as the exciting wave pulse for the simulation. It
should be noted that actual ultrasonic tests were conducted on the concrete slab specimen before
it was cut into several sections.

3.4 Simulation results

The time period was set to 200 microseconds and the time incrementation was set to fully
automatic by computing the stability limit using global estimation procedure in Abaqus. The
global estimation algorithm determines the maximum frequency of the entire model using the
current dilatational wave speed and this algorithm continuously updates the estimate for the
maximum frequency.

The following figures show the snapshots of the 2-D simulation results for the spatial
displacements of all the nodes. In Figure 2, the 50 mm transducer was positioned, on the top
surface, directly above the steel reinforcing bar while in Figure 3 the transducer was positioned
directly above the aluminum pipe. A 1 cycle sine wave with a 200 kHz central frequency was
used as the input signal for both simulations. The snapshots show that the wave front was
attenuated by the aggregates as it propagates from the top surface towards the bottom surface and
reflect back to the top surface. The reflected waves from the steel reinforcing bar and aluminum
pipe are shown in Figure 2(b) and Figure 3(b), respectively. Also, it can be seen from these
figures that the incident wave was greatly attenuated and diffused by the aluminum pipe than the
steel reinforcing bar. It is very important to note that for each numerical simulation, the
computational time is just less than 10 minutes using 2 processors in parallel. When compared
with the actual UT results, the arrival times for the bottom surface reflection are almost the same
however the obtained waveforms are slightly different. This is due to the fact that the actual UT
was conducted in 3-D while the numerical simulation was done in 2-D only, not considering the
effects of the scatterers along the perpendicular direction.

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 50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”
September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

4. CONCLUSION

In this study, a time domain simulation for ultrasonic wave propagation in concrete was
demonstrated using the explicit dynamic finite element method. The numerical simulations show
the ultrasonic wave diffusion in concrete caused by the changes in acoustic impedance within the
concrete interior, due to the distribution of aggregates and the presence of inclusions such as air
voids, steel reinforcing bar and aluminum pipe. The use of small increments, dictated by the
stability limit, is advantageous since it allows the solution to proceed without iterations and
tolerances and without requiring tangent stiffness matrices to be formed. While the analysis may
take a large number of increments, each increment is relatively inexpensive, often resulting in an
economical solution. The EDFEM is, therefore, computationally attractive for problems where
the total dynamic response time that must be modeled is only a few orders of magnitude longer
than the stability limit such as for wave propagation problems.

(a) 20 s (a) 20 s

(b) 40 s (b) 40 s

(c) 60 s (c) 60 s

(d) 80 s (d) 80 s

(e) 100 s (e) 100 s

Figure 2. Time snapshots of wave propagation Figure 3. Time snapshots of wave propagation
when the transducer is positioned directly when the transducer is positioned directly
above the steel rebar above the aluminum pipe

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 50th ASEP Anniversary International Convention & Exposition, “Safer, Smarter & Greener”
September 28-30, 2011 Makati City, Philippines

REFERENCES

Repair-Evaluation-Maintenance-Rehabilitation Research Program, REMR Technical Note CS-ES 1.10,

1991.

Buyukozturk ,O., “Imaging of concrete structures”, NDT&E International, Vol.. 31, No. 4, pp.233-243,
1998.

Dassault Systemes, Abaqus Analysis User’s Manual. Version 6.7.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Author One is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering, University of the Philippines,
Diliman. He can be contacted at E-mail: oscar.antoniojr@gmail.com.

Author Two is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Informatics and
Department of Civil Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Author Three is an Application Specialist at Simulia, Dassault Systemes K.K.

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