Open Access

ARTICLE

Non-Contact Testing of Concrete Stress via the Laser-Generated Rayleigh Wave

Mengxue Li^1,2, Xinyi Chen^1,*, Yuxi Xie²

1 State Key Laboratory of Mountain Bridge and Tunnel Engineering, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, China
2 Chongqing Institute of Urban Governance, Chongqing, China

* Corresponding Author: Xinyi Chen. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Health Monitoring of Transportation Infrastructure Structure)

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2026, 20(5), 16 https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2026.079754

Received 27 January 2026; Accepted 26 March 2026; Issue published 24 August 2026

Abstract

Concrete stress is a critical indicator for evaluating the performance of concrete structures. To achieve non-contact testing of concrete stress, this study analyzed the propagation of laser-generated Rayleigh waves (R-wave) in concrete. A correlation model was established between the concrete stress and the R-wave velocity. To validate the theoretical analysis, ultrasonic experiments were conducted. The experimental results demonstrated that the stress history of concrete determines whether a stable linear relationship exists between the stress and the R-wave velocity. Additionally, the acoustoelastic coefficient of concrete was found to vary with its age. Based on these findings, a concrete stress evaluation method based on the R-wave velocity was proposed. When the stress was less than or greater than 16 MPa, the testing error was less than 8 or 2 MPa, respectively. Theoretical and experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed method, providing a promising solution for the non-contact stress testing of in-service concrete structures.

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Keywords

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