Ultrasonic testing and pulse refraction for the assessment of fire damaged concrete elements

The matter of different types of damages to the buildings is an important issue and the investigation of the intensity and effects of them to the structures can help the engineers to decide if the building under consideration have to be totally demolished or the repairing it can be a better way from economical and time-saving point of view. In the field of structural assessment there are many methods to assess the condition of a building, bridge or any other type of structures both in normal condition and in the case of being faced to a damage, generally these methods are divided in two main categories which are NDTS (non-destructive techniques) and the DTS (destructive techniques) which are discussed later. The most useful ND technique can be the ultrasonic pulse velocity testing which can make engineers to have a detailed information of the different points of a member, this technique is the main topic of this thesis through the investigation of layered materials and a damaged concrete member through performing different UPV measurements and to obtain the wave propagation traveltimes, comparing the distance-time data with the ones obtained by tomographic approach through an iterative procedure.