• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.207-220
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• 2022

Structural health monitoring (SHM) plays a vital role in the maintenance and operation of constructions. In recent years, autonomous inspection has received considerable attention because conventional monitoring methods are inefficient and expensive to some extent. To develop autonomous inspection, a potential approach of crack identification is needed to locate defects. Therefore, this study exploits two deep learning-based segmentation models, DeepLabv3+ and Mask R-CNN, for crack segmentation because these two segmentation models can outperform other similar models on public datasets. Additionally, impacts of label quality on model performance are explored to obtain an empirical guideline on the preparation of image datasets. The influence of image cropping and label refining are also investigated, and different strategies are applied to the dataset, resulting in six alternated datasets. By conducting experiments with these datasets, the highest mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU), 75%, is achieved by Mask R-CNN. The rise in the percentage of annotations by image cropping improves model performance while the label refining has opposite effects on the two models. As the label refining results in fewer error annotations of cracks, this modification enhances the performance of DeepLabv3+. Instead, the performance of Mask R-CNN decreases because fragmented annotations may mistake an instance as multiple instances. To sum up, both DeepLabv3+ and Mask R-CNN are capable of crack identification, and an empirical guideline on the data preparation is presented to strengthen identification successfulness via image cropping and label refining.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.443-457
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• 2011

The loss of strength in a structure as a result of cyclic loads over a period of life time is an important phenomenon for the life-cycle analysis. Service loads are accentuated at the areas of stress concentration, mainly at the connection of components. Structural components unavoidably are affected by defects such as surface scratches, surface roughness and weld defects of random sizes, which usually occur during the manufacturing and handling process. These defects are shown to have an important effect on the fatigue life of the structural components by promoting crack initiation sites. The value of equivalent initial flaw size (EIFS) is calculated by using the back extrapolation technique and the Paris law of fatigue crack growth from results of fatigue tests. We try to analyze the effect of EIFS distribution in a multiple site damage (MSD) specimen by using the extended finite element method (XFEM). For the analysis, fatigue tests were conducted on the centrally-cracked specimens and MSD specimens.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.7
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• pp.403-411
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• 2008

Zr-based amorphous alloy matrix composites reinforced with tantalum continuous fibers were fabricated by liquid pressing process, and their microstructures and mechanical properties were investigated. About 60 vol.% of tantalum fibers were homogeneously distributed inside the amorphous matrix, which contained a small amount of polygonal crystalline particles. The ductility of the tantalum-continuous-fiber-reinforced composite under tensile or compressive loading was dramatically improved over that of the monolithic amorphous alloy, while maintaining high strength. The consequential observation of the tensile deformation and fracture behavior of the composite showed the formation of multiple shear bands and multiple necking, crack deflection in the amorphous matrix, and obstruction of crack propagation by ductile fibers, thereby resulting in very high tensile elongation of 7.2%. These findings suggested that the liquid pressing process was useful for the development of amorphous matrix composites with improved ductility.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.161-168
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• 2021

Cracks affect the robustness of infrastructures such as buildings, bridge, pavement, and pipelines. This paper presents an automated crack detection system which detect cracks in diverse surfaces. We first constructed the combined crack dataset, consists of multiple crack datasets in diverse domains presented in prior studies. Then, state-of-the-art deep learning models in computer vision tasks including VGG, ResNet, WideResNet, ResNeXt, DenseNet, and EfficientNet, were used to validate the performance of crack detection. We divided the combined dataset into train (80%) and test set (20%) to evaluate the employed models. DenseNet121 showed the highest accuracy at 96.20% with relatively low number of parameters compared to other models. Based on the validation procedures of the advanced deep learning models in crack detection task, we shed light on the cost-effective automated crack detection system which can be applied to different surfaces and structures with low computing resources.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.675-687
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• 2018

In the previous studies on the porous rock strength the effect of pore number and its diameter is not explicitly defined. In this paper crack initiation, propagation and coalescence in Brazilian model disc containing a single cylindrical hole and or multiple holes have been studied numerically using PFC3D. In model with internal hole, the ratio of hole diameter to model diameter was varied between 0.03, 0.17, 0.25, 0.33, and 0.42. In model with multiple hole number of holes was different in various model, i.e., one hole, two holes, three holes, four holes, five holes, six holes, seven holes, eight holes and nine holes. Diameter of these holes was 5 mm, 10 mm and 12 mm. The pre-holed Brazilian discs are numerically tested under Brazilian test. The breakage load in the ring type disc specimens containing an internal hole with varying diameters is measured. The mechanism of cracks propagation in the wall of the ring type specimens is also studied. In the case of multi-hole Brazilian disc, the cracks propagation and b cracks coalescence are also investigated. The results shows that breaking of the pre-holed disc specimens is due to the propagation of radially induced tensile cracks initiated from the surface of the central hole and propagating toward the direction of diametrical loading. In the case of disc specimens with multiple holes, the cracks propagation and cracks coalescence may occur simultaneously in the breaking process of model under diametrical compressive loading. Finally the results shows that the failure stress and crack initiation stress decreases by increasing the hole diameter. Also, the failure stress decreases by increasing the number of hole which mobilized in failure. The results of these simulations were comprised with other experimental and numerical test results. It has been shown that the numerical and experimental results are in good agreement with each other.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.8
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• pp.524-537
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• 2008

Zr-based amorphous alloy matrix composites reinforced with metallic continuous fibers were fabricated by liquid pressing process, and their fracture properties were investigated by directly observing microfracture process using an in situ loading stage installed inside a scanning electron microscope chamber. About 60 vol.% of metallic fibers were homogeneously distributed inside the amorphous matrix. Apparent fracture toughness of the stainless-steel- and tungsten-fiber-reinforced composites was lower than that of monolithic amorphous alloy, while that of the Ta-fiber-reinforced composite was higher. According to the microfracture observation, shear bands or cracks were initiated at the amorphous matrix, and the propagation of the initiated shear bands or cracks was effectively blocked by fibers, thereby resulting in stable crack growth which could be confirmed by the fracture resistance curve (R-curve) behavior. This increase in fracture resistance with increasing crack length improved fracture properties of the fiber-reinforced composites, and could be explained by mechanisms of formation of multiple shear bands or multiple cracks at the amorphous matrix and blocking of crack or shear band propagation and multiple necking at metallic fibers.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.9
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• pp.26-31
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• 2003

Aging aircraft accumulates widespread fatigue damage commonly referred to as multiple site damage(MSO). For ductile material such as 2024-T3 aluminum, MSO may lower the service life below that which is predicted by conventional fracture mechanics. The present paper is concerned with the fatigue life extension by pre-indentation technique for thin 2024-T3 aluminum plate to decelerate the crack propagation rate in the panels with MSO. The panel with fastener holes can be simply modelled by Hole/Slot type Middle-Tension specimen. Results of fatigue testing show significantly improving failure cycles from 10 to 40 times. This retardation effect is decreased by increasing the loading level in the constant amplitude loading. In the sense of retardation mechanism, the crack propagation rate is gradually attenuated by entering the indentation mark and maintains at the lowest value for a long period after the edge of crack passes the center of indentation area.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.343-351
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• 2018

Brazilian disc test is one of the most widely used experiments in the literature of geo-mechanics. In this work, the pre-holed concrete Brazilian disc specimens are numerically modelled by a two-dimensional discrete element approach. The cracks initiations, propagations and coalescences in the numerically simulated Brazilian discs (each containing a single cylindrical hole and or multiple holes) are studied. The pre-holed Brazilian discs are numerically tested under Brazilian test conditions. The single-holed Brazilian discs with different ratios of the diameter of the holes to that of the disc radius are modelled first. The breakage load in the ring type disc specimens containing an internal hole with varying diameters is measured and the crack propagation mechanism around the wall of the ring is investigated. The crack propagation and coalescence mechanisms are also studied for the case of multi-holes' concrete Brazilian discs. The numerical and experimental results show that the breaking mechanism of the pre-holed disc specimens is mainly due to the initiation of the radially induced tensile cracks which are growth from the surface of the central hole. Radially cracks propagated toward the direction of diametrical loading. It has been observed that for the case of disc specimens with multiple holes under diametrical compressive loading, the breaking process of the modelled specimens may occur due to the simultaneous cracks propagation and cracks coalescence phenomena. These results also show that as the hole diameter and the number of the holes increases both the failure stress and the crack initiation stress decreases. The experimental results already exist in the literature are quit agree with the proposed numerical simulation results which validates this simulation procedure.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.83-89
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• 2018

The thermal characteristics of concrete specimens were analyzed using cement paste specimens with artificial cracks. In order to understand the temperature characteristics of the specimen depending on the crack depth, the specimen was heated and the minimum temperatures of the specimens at which cracks appear were investigated according to the crack depth. It was confirmed that the surface temperature distribution of the specimen varies depending on whether the specimen is cracked or not, because of the single and multiple reflections of the incident energy. Furthermore, as the temperature distribution of the specimen reaches a steady state, the temperature data tends to decrease with the crack depth. Through the observation of the normalized temperatures, it was found that the temperature of the specimens obtained from this experiment reached a steady state after 10 minutes. At this time, the standard deviation of the normalized temperature is around 0.01 or less, and the temperature decreases linearly with increasing crack depth. This result is considered to be closely related to the area where multiple reflections occur in the cracked region. If the correlation between the crack region and the incident energy is analyzed for various specimens, it can be applied to the diffuse reflection of the light.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.529-547
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• 2011

This paper presents the global-local finite cover method (GL-FCM) that is capable of analyzing structures involving local heterogeneities and propagating cracks. The suggested method is composed of two techniques. One of them is the FCM, which is one of the PU-based generalized finite element methods, for the analysis of local cohesive crack growth. The mechanical behavior evaluated in local heterogeneous structures by the FCM is transferred to the overall (global) structure by the so-called mortar method. The other is a method of mesh superposition for hierarchical modeling, which enables us to evaluate the average stiffness by the analysis of local heterogeneous structures not subjected to crack propagation. Several numerical experiments are conducted to validate the accuracy of the proposed method. The capability and applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated in an illustrative numerical example, in which we predict the mechanical deterioration of a reinforced concrete (RC) structure, whose local regions are subjected to propagating cracks induced by reinforcement corrosion.