• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.141-151
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• 2022

In recent years, the industry and research communities have focused on developing autonomous crack inspection approaches, which mainly include image acquisition and crack detection. In these approaches, mobile devices such as cameras, drones or smartphones are utilized as sensing platforms to acquire structural images, and the deep learning (DL)-based methods are being developed as important crack detection approaches. However, the process of image acquisition and collection is time-consuming, which delays the inspection. Also, the present mobile devices such as smartphones can be not only a sensing platform but also a computing platform that can be embedded with deep neural networks (DNNs) to conduct on-site crack detection. Due to the limited computing resources of mobile devices, the size of the DNNs should be reduced to improve the computational efficiency. In this study, an architecture called pruned crack recognition network (PCR-Net) was developed for the detection of structural cracks. A dataset containing 11000 images was established based on the raw images from bridge inspections. A pruning method was introduced to reduce the size of the base architecture for the optimization of the model size. Comparative studies were conducted with image processing techniques (IPTs) and other DNNs for the evaluation of the performance of the proposed PCR-Net. Furthermore, a modularly designed framework that integrated the PCR-Net was developed to realize a DL-based crack detection application for smartphones. Finally, on-site crack detection experiments were carried out to validate the performance of the developed system of smartphone-based detection of structural cracks.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.309-316
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• 1998

In this paper, a newly derived formulation of a crack detection model is presented and its feasibility to detect cracks in structures is verified experimentally. To meet this objective, the followig approach is utilized. Firstly, the crack detection scheme which consists of the damage localization model and the crack detection model is formulated. Secondly, the feasibility and practicality of the complete procedure of the crack detection model is evaluated by locating and sizing cracks in clamped-clamped beams for which a f3w modal parameters were measured for sixteen uncracked and cracked states. Major results observed from the crack detection exercises include that far most damage cases, the predicted crack locations falls within very close to the inflicted locations of cracks in the test beam and the size of crack values estimated at the predicted locations are very close to the inflicted magnitudes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.91 no.2
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• pp.163-175
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• 2024

The objective of this research is to improve public safety in civil engineering by recognizing fractures in concrete structures quickly and correctly. The study offers a new crack detection method based on advanced image processing and machine learning techniques, specifically transfer learning with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Four pre-trained models (VGG16, AlexNet, ResNet18, and DenseNet161) were fine-tuned to detect fractures in concrete surfaces. These models constantly produced accuracy rates greater than 80%, showing their ability to automate fracture identification and potentially reduce structural failure costs. Furthermore, the study expands its scope beyond crack detection to identify concrete health, using a dataset with a wide range of surface defects and anomalies including cracks. Notably, using VGG16, which was chosen as the most effective network architecture from the first phase, the study achieves excellent accuracy in classifying concrete health, demonstrating the model's satisfactorily performance even in more complex scenarios.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.317-328
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• 2009

Current maintenance operations and integrity checks on a wide array of structures require personnel entry into normally-inaccessible or hazardous areas to perform necessary nondestructive inspections. To gain access for these inspections, structure must be disassembled and removed or personnel must be transported to remote locations. The use of in-situ sensors, coupled with remote interrogation, can be employed to overcome a myriad of inspection impediments stemming from accessibility limitations, complex geometries, the location and depth of hidden damage, and the isolated location of the structure. Furthermore, prevention of unexpected flaw growth and structural failure could be improved if on-board health monitoring systems were used to more regularly assess structural integrity. A research program has been completed to develop and validate Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) Sensors for surface crack detection. Statistical methods using one-sided tolerance intervals were employed to derive Probability of Detection (POD) levels for a wide array of application scenarios. Multi-year field tests were also conducted to study the deployment and long-term operation of CVM sensors on aircraft. This paper presents the quantitative crack detection capabilities of the CVM sensor, its performance in actual flight environments, and the prospects for structural health monitoring applications on aircraft and other civil structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.765-769
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• 2006

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.309-322
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• 2014

Detection of fatigue cracks at an early stage of their development is important in structural health monitoring. The breathing of cracks in a structure generates higher harmonic components of the exciting frequency in the frequency spectrum. Previously, the residual operational deflection shape (R-ODS) method was successfully applied to beams with a single crack. The method is based on the ODSs at the exciting frequency and its higher harmonic components which consider both amplitude and phase information of responses to map the deflection pattern of structures. Although the R-ODS method shows the location of a single crack clearly, its identification for the location of multiple cracks in a structure is not always obvious. Therefore, an improvement to the R-ODS method is presented here to make the identification process distinct for the beams with multiple cracks. Numerical and experimental examples are utilised to investigate the effectiveness of the improved method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.5
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• pp.599-610
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• 2021

Early detection of small concrete crack or reinforcement corrosion is necessary for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Global vibration based methods are advantageous over local methods because of simple equipment installation and cost efficiency. Among vibration based techniques, FRF based methods are preferred over modal based methods. In this study, a new coupled method using frequency response function (FRF) and proper orthogonal modes (POM) is proposed by using the dynamic characteristic of a damaged beam. For the numerical simulation, wave finite element (WFE), coupled with traditional finite element (FE) method is used for effectively incorporating the damage related information and faster computation. As reported in literature, hybrid combination of wave function based wave finite element method and shape function based finite element method can addresses the mid frequency modelling difficulty as it utilises the advantages of both the methods. It also reduces the dynamic matrix dimension. The algorithms are implemented on a three-dimensional reinforced concrete beam. Damage is modelled and studied for two scenarios, i.e., crack in concrete and rebar corrosion. Single and multiple damage locations with different damage length are also considered. The proposed methodology is found to be very sensitive to both single- and multiple- damage while being computationally efficient at the same time. It is observed that the detection of damage due to corrosion is more challenging than that of concrete crack. The similarity index obtained from the damage parameters shows that it can be a very effective indicator for appropriately indicating initiation of damage in concrete structure in the form of spread corrosion or invisible crack.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.193-199
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• 2002

Structral crack of RC structure generally occurs when the tension stress by applied load is larger than tension resistance of concrete, and it means deterioration of structure and the decrease of load resistance. Because structural crack of structure can occur critical damage to structure occasionally, the research on crack detection algorithm of RC structure is needed for assurance of structural safety and effective maintenance of structure. In this paper, we executed the laboratory test on measuring strain of RC beam's tension and compression zone, using strain gauge which is widely used on strain measurement of civil structure. By using measured strain, we analyzed strain change, elastic modulus change, and neutral axis change to detect crack of RC beam. As a result, we proposed the simple and effective crack detection algorithm using trends of neutral axis position change.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.731-738
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• 2015

This study proposed the method of the multi-crack detection using the sensitivity coefficient matrix which is calculated from the change of eigenvalues and eigenvectors before and after the crack. Each crack is modeled by a rotational springs. The method is applied to the cantilever beam with miulti-crack. The eigenvalues and eigenvectors are determined for different crack locations and depths. The prediction of multi-crack detection are in good agreement with the results of structural reanalysis.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.385-395
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• 2022

Detecting cracks on a concrete structure is crucial for structural maintenance, a crack being an indicator of possible damage. Conventional crack detection methods which include visual inspection and non-destructive equipment, are typically limited to a small region and require time-consuming processes. Recently, to reduce the human intervention in the inspections, various researchers have sought computer vision-based crack analyses: One class is filter-based methods, which effectively transforms the image to detect crack edges. The other class is using deep-learning algorithms. For example, convolutional neural networks have shown high precision in identifying cracks in an image. However, when the objective is to classify not only the existence of crack but also the types of cracks, only a few studies have been reported, limiting their practical use. Thus, the presented study develops an image processing procedure that detects cracks and classifies crack types; whether the image contains a crazing-type, single crack, or multiple cracks. The properties and steps in the algorithm have been developed using field-obtained images. Subsequently, the algorithm is validated from additional 227 images obtained from an open database. For test datasets, the proposed algorithm showed accuracy of 92.8% in average. In summary, the developed algorithm can precisely classify crazing-type images, while some single crack images may misclassify into multiple cracks, yielding conservative results. As a result, the successful results of the presented study show potentials of using vision-based technologies for providing crack information with reduced human intervention.