Non destructive ultrasound equipment to evaluate the concrete compressive strength

Concrete is composed of sands, aggregates and cement powders mixed in water to produce a chemical reaction, named Hydration, that causes concrete hardening. The monitoring of the compressive strength during hydration is crucial to assess the concrete quality. The standard approach used to measure concrete strength consists of a manual and expensive process made by crushing concrete cubes in a compression machine. A non-destructive method based on monitoring the reflection coefficient of the ultrasound waves at the interface where the material is poured can replace the standard approach. In this work we present a system that embeds all the electronics needed for generating, acquiring and processing the ultrasound signal for automatically monitoring the concrete strength during and after the hydration process.