The feasibility of detecting anomalies or discontinuities in concrete beams
using lamb waves is investigated in this paper The traditional ultrasonic
methods for inspecting discontinuities in concrete use the reflection, tran
smission and scattering of longitudinal waves by internal discontinuities.
Signal amplitude and time of flight measurements provide information about
the internal anomalies in concrete. However, these methods are time consumi
ng and, as will be shown in this paper, the traditional techniques often fa
il to detect honeycombs, closed cracks and small anomalies. In this paper t
he potential of the lamb wave technique to defect those anomalies in large
concrete beams is investigated. The lamb wave technique is found to be reli
able for detecting such anomalies.