Self-Excited Acoustical System for Stress Measurement in Mass Rocks

The paper is devoted to theoretical end experimental studies of the low-frequency Self-excited Acoustical System (SAS), which allows monitoring stress changes in various elastic media including metals, concrete and mass rocks. The main principle of the SAS system is using a vibration exciter and vibration receiver placed on a sample with a positive feedback, which causes the excitation of the system. Stress changes manifest themselves in small but detectable variations of resonance frequency which can be used to indirectly measure stress changes in the material.In the paper the considerations concerning working frequency of SAS were performed. It was suggested that in the case of stress variation in mass rock monitoring, the low frequency (even infrasound) band should be selected, in contrast to the stress monitoring in columns of marble or concrete, where frequencies from an acoustic band should be used. Computer simulations conducted in the MATLAB-Simulink environment were based on the research performe...