Assessment of an industrial pavement via the impact acoustics method

Industrial pavements often represent a critical issue in Civil Engineering. Shrinkage strain, excessive deflection, fatigue loading, incompatibility among different concrete layers are some common problems which may lead to an extensive damage in this type of structure. Such inconveniences usually involve quite large areas, calling for efficient Non-Destructive techniques in order to perform a thorough inspection of the pavement conditions. In this paper the impact-acoustic technique has been regarded as a method for detecting the delamination occurring under the abrasion-resistant top coating of concrete ground-slabs. The implementation via affordable tools for digital audio recording, the proper processing of the audio files and the procedure for drafting the damage maps are discussed in the paper with reference to the case study of a warehouse building.