Highways Agency Reports

This report describes a large scale proving trial conducted to elevate the application of the SoundPrint system to the detection of wire breaks in ground ancjorages. Three 4.1 m long anchorage tendons, constructed in accordance with normal practice, and installed in a 600 mm diameter, 4.5 m long gun-barrel test rig were subjected to a number of load cycles. A manual log of the load-extension relation and observed wire breaks was made throughout the test. The correlation between observed wire breaks and those determined by SoundPrint is good. There is evidence to suggest that the system detected wire breaks that were undetectable through an examinaion of the load-extension relations of the tendons.