Exploring acoustic emission for integrity assessment of bolted anchors used in rock climbing and rope access

Atkinson, Tim, Pearson, Matt ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1625-3611, McCrory, John, Marks, Ryan and Pullin, Rhys ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2853-6099 2026. Exploring acoustic emission for integrity assessment of bolted anchors used in rock climbing and rope access. Presented at: 37th Conference of the European Working Group on Acoustic Emission, Lyon, France, 8-10 September 2026. e-Journal of Nondestructive Testing. , vol.31 (10) 10.58286/35003

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Abstract

Anchor Bolts are critical safety elements in rock climbing and rope access, where the unexpected failure of a bolt could result in serious injury or death. There is currently no thorough non-destructive method for assessing the integrity of such bolts. It is proposed that the Acoustic Emission (AE) released during tensile loading could be used to characterise the condition of a bolt. To evaluate the efficacy of AE for integrity assessment, two resin and two expansion bolts were installed in C40 concrete. The concrete was then restrained in a load machine with the bolts loaded in tension until failure. The resin bolts achieved a higher maximum load than the expansion bolts, with all bolts exceeding the minimum expected strength of 15 kN. AE activity was observed to increase with applied load for all tests. In the resin bolt tests a marked increase in AE activity occurred shortly before failure. Linear Discriminant Analysis was applied to AE features extracted from the waveforms, which demonstrated that AE hits recorded below 85% of the maximum load can be distinguished from those recorded above this threshold. These results indicate that AE shows promise for the integrity assessment of in-situ bolts.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Engineering
ISSN:	1435-4934
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	7 October 2026
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2026 09:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/190063

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