• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2007

Cracks in concrete structures should be measured to periodically assess potential problems in durability and serviceability. Conventional crack measurement systems depend on visual inspections and manual measurements of the crack features such as width, length, and direction using microscope and crack gage. However, conventional methods take long time as well as manpower, and lack quantitative objectivity resulted by inspectors. In this study, an evaluation technique for concrete surface cracks is developed using image processing and artificial neural network. Developed technique consists of three major parts: (1) crack detection (2) crack analysis and (3) pattern recognition. To examine validity of the technique developed in this study, crack analyzing tests were performed on the images obtained from various types of concrete surface cracks. The test results revealed that the system is highly effective in automatically analyzing concrete surface cracks in terms of features and patterns of cracks.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.927-935
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• 2018

The mechanical behavior of the brittle material samples containing the internal and edge cracks are studied under direct shear tests. It is tried to investigate the effects of stress interactions and stress intensity factors at the tips of the pre-existing cracks on the failure mechanism of the bridge areas within these cracks. The direct shear tests are carried out on more than 30 various modeled samples each containing the internal cracks (S models) and edge cracks (E models). The visual inspection and a low power microscope are used to monitor the failure mechanisms of the tested samples. The cracks initiation, propagation and coalescences are being visualized in each test and the detected failure surfaces are used to study and measure the characteristics of each surface. These investigations show that as the ratio of the crack area to the total shear surface increases the shear failure mode changes to that of the tensile. When the bridge areas are fixed, the bridge areas in between the edge cracks have less strength than those of internal cracks. However, the results of this study show that for the case of internal cracks as the bridge area is increased, the strength of the material within the bridge area is decreased. It has been shown that the failure mechanism and fracture pattern of the samples depend on the bridge areas because as the bridge area decreases the interactions between the crack tip stress fields increases.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.89-92
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• 2012

Effective notch stress, as an approach to evaluate the local stress at a notch (weld toe or root), is defined as the total stress assuming linear-elastic material behavior. This method can be effectively used to evaluate the fatigue performance of welded joints. In this study, finite element analysis results using the effective notch stress method were correlated with fatigue test results of rib-to-deck welded joints in a steel orthotropic bridge deck. Effective notch stress approach provided a good correlation with the crack pattern observed in the full-scale fatigue test. A higher effective notch stress at the critical weld toe than at the weld root was consistent with the dominant crack pattern observed at the weld toe during testing. The effective notch stress at the toe on the deck plate was about 80% higher than that on the rib; no cracks at the weld toe on the rib in the testing were observed. Maximum effective notch stress at the weld root occurred on the upper side of the root notch, which indicates that cracks are more likely to propagate into the deck plate, not into the weld metal. This is also consistent with the observed crack pattern in which the crack from the root propagated upward into the deck plate. No such crack pattern, propagating into the weld metal, was observed in the testing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

In order to secure the safety of various machinery, it is very important to develop a technique for accurately and quickly measuring the cracks generated in the mechanical equipment and evaluating the mechanical characteristics. The evaluation of the mechanical properties is accompanied by an appropriate strain measurement according to the material and crack occurrence of the target structure. Especially, when micro cracks are generated, the evaluation method is very important. Digital image correlation is an optical full field displacement measuring method which is using currently with speckles in the interested area. However the evaluation method and conditions of image distributions have to be considered carefully to measure the crack occurrence because the images of the speckle patterns affect the quality of displacement results. In this study, the speckle pattern density is characterized to improve the accuracy of the measurement method. And also the micro crack initiation is detected by the measured displacement in the adopted speckle pattern distribution. It is shown that the proposed method is useful to determine the density pattern distribution for the accurate measurement and crack detection.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.569-582
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• 2018

Effects of crack separation, bridge area, on the tensile behaviour of concrete are studied experimentally and numerically through the Brazilian tensile test. The physical data obtained from the Brazilian tests are used to calibrate the two-dimensional particle flow code based on discrete element method (DEM). Then some specially designed Brazilian disc specimens containing two parallel cracks are used to perform the physical tests in the laboratory and numerically simulated to make the suitable numerical models to be tested. The experimental and numerical results of the Brazilian disc specimens are compared to conclude the validity and applicability of these models used in this research. Validation of the simulated models can be easily checked with the results of Brazilian tests performed on non-persistent cracked physical models. The Brazilian discs used in this work have a diameter of 54 mm and contain two parallel centred cracks ($90^{\circ}$ to the horizontal) loaded indirectly under the compressive line loading. The lengths of cracks are considered as; 10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm and 40 mm, respectively. The visually observed failure process gained through numerical Brazilian tests are found to be very similar to those obtained through the experimental tests. The fracture patterns demonstrated by DEM simulations are mostly affected by the crack separation but the tensile strength of bridge area is related to the fracture pattern and failure mechanism of the testing samples. It has also been shown that when the crack lengths are less than 30 mm, the tensile cracks may initiate from the cracks tips and propagate parallel to loading direction till coalesce with the other cracks tips while when the cracks lengths are more than 30 mm, these tensile cracks may propagate through the intact concrete itself rather than that of the bridge area.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.497-505
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• 2018

Three points bending flexural test was modeled numerically to study the crack propagation in the pre-cracked beams. The pre-existing edge cracks in the beam models were considered to investigate the crack propagation and coalescence paths within the modeled samples. The effects of particle size on the single edge-notched round bar in bending test were considered too. The results show that Failure pattern is constant by increasing the ball diameter. Tensile cracks are dominant mode of failure. These crack initiates from notch tip, propagate parallel to loading axis and coalescence with upper model boundary. Number of cracks increase by decreasing the ball diameter. Also, tensile fracture toughness was decreased with increasing the particle size. In the present study, the influences of particles sizes on the cracks propagations and coalescences in the brittle materials such as rocks and concretes are numerically analyzed by using a three dimensional particle flow code (PFC3D). These analyses improve the understanding of the stability of rocks and concretes structures such as rock slopes, tunnel constructions and underground openings.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2018

Open-mode cracks could be commonly observed in layered rocks. A concept model is firstly used to explore the mechanism of the vertical cracks (VCs) in the top layer. Then the crack behaviour of the two-layer model is simulated based on a cohesive zone model (CZM) for layer interfaces and a plastic-damage model for rocks. The model indicates that the tensile stress normal to the VCs changes to compression if the crack spacing to layer thickness ratio is lower than a threshold. The results indicate that there is a threshold for interfacial shear strength that controls the crack patterns of the layered system. If the shear strength is lower than the threshold, the top layer is meshed by the VCs and interfacial cracks (ICs). When the shear strength is higher than the threshold, the top layer is meshed by the VCs and parallel cracks (PCs). If the shear strength is comparative to the threshold, a combining pattern of VCs, PCs and ICs for the top layer can be formed. The evolutions of stress distribution in the crack-bound block indicate that the ICs and PCs can reduce the load transferred for the substrate layer, and thus leads to a crack saturation state.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.57-63
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• 2013

This paper discusses 2D models of beams for simulating the fracture of brittle materials. A simulation of an experiment on a concrete beam subjected to bending, in which two overlapping cracks occur, is used to study the effect of individual beam characteristics and different arrangements of the beams in the overall network mesh. It was found that any regular orientation of the beams influences the resulting crack patterns. Methods to implement a wide range of poisson's ratios are also developed, the use of the mesh to study arbitrary micro-structures is outlined. The crack pattern that are obtained with mesh are in good agreement with the experimental results. Also, numerical simulations of the tests were performed by means of a model, and non-integer dimensions were measured on the predicted mesh damage patterns.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Rock Mechanics Conference
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• 2011.09a
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• pp.3-21
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• 2011

Laboratory experiments and numerical simulations using Particle Flow Code (PFC2D) were performed to study the effects of joint separation and joint overlapping on the full failure behavior of rock bridges under direct shear loading. Through numerical direct shear tests, the failure process is visually observed and the failure patterns are achieved with reasonable conformity with the experimental results. The simulation results clearly showed that cracks developed during the test were predominantly tension cracks. It was deduced that the failure pattern was mostly influenced by both of the joint separation and joint overlapping while the shear strength is closely related to the failure pattern and its failure mechanism. The studies revealed that shear strength of rock bridges are increased with increasing in the joint separation. Also, it was observed that for a fixed cross sectional area of rock bridges, shear strength of overlapped joints are less than the shear strength of non-overlapped joints.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.67-74
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• 2023

A large number of concrete structures are built and used around the world. To ensure their safe and continuous use, these structures require constant inspection and maintenance. While man-powered inspection and maintenance techniques are efficient, they can only provide intermittent status checks at the time of on-site inspection. Therefore, there is a growing need for a system that can continuously monitor the condition of the structure. A study was conducted to detect cracks and damage by installing a conductive coating on the surface of a concrete structure. A parallel resistance pattern that can monitor the occurrence and progression of cracks was developed by reflecting the structural characteristics of concrete structure. An empirical study was conducted to veryfy the application of the proposed method. The crack detection pattern was installed on the reinforced concrete beams, and the crack monitoring method was verified through applying a load on the beams.