Monitoring Crack Changes in Concrete Structures - Yonsei.pdf

Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 20 (2005) 52–61 Monitoring Crack Changes in Concrete Structures Hong-Gyoo Sohn,∗ Yun-Mook Lim, Kong-Hyun Yun Gi-Hong Kim School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-Dong Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul 120-749, Korea Abstract: This study proposes a crack-monitoring sys- The maintenance of the concrete structures began tem to quantify the change of cracks from multitempo- from the observation of cracks and changes in sur- ral images during the monitoring period. A series of faces (Bazant and Xiang, 1997; Yamazaki, 1998; Shi images were taken from an off-the-shelf digital camera. et al., 2001). The simplest form of quantitative anal- Concrete cracks were extracted from the digital images ysis is visual inspection of the cracks on concrete by employing a series of image-processing techniques. structures. Trained personnel may easily measure the The image coordinates and orientation of same cracks length and width of cracks. The manually obtained can be changed since the position and direction of the data provide critical information and can be used to portable camera vary at every exposure time. To moni- make an assessment of the concrete structures. This tor the crack changes (width and length), it is critical to approach seems to be simple but it depends a lot on transform the image coordinates of cracks extracted from the knowledge and experience of each person. More- each image into the same object coordinates of the con- over, there are no permanent records of the examined crete surface.