Efficient crack detection and quantification in concrete structures using IoT

ABSTRACT

Now-a-days public transit in our country has a significant usage of bridges and tunnels. Maintaining the safety of such structures becomes the need of the hour. Cracking can invite sudden failures of concrete structures. Within recent years, there has been an increase in the use of image processing techniques as Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) method to detect defects and anomalies in such structures. Hence, this work presents an efficient image processing model for identifying and quantifying the cracks in common structures using two algorithms. The first algorithm uses pattern classification method to classify the identified specimens as crack or not. This pattern classification algorithm is tested and evaluated with the test specimens of structures having induced cracks. The second algorithm called morphological processing uses an efficient thresholding strategy to improve the detection accuracy of the cracks. Here the aim is to detect even the faintest of cracks and magnify them. Thus, any one of the algorithms can be adopted depending on the application. The developed algorithms have been tested in real field at the final stage and achieved a detection accuracy of nearly 96.37%and all the obtained images have been stored digitally on a web server.

KEYWORDS:

• Cracks
• pattern classification
• morphological processing
• NDT
• IoT

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the SSN Trust under Student Internal Funding Project;SSN Trust;

Notes on contributors

Ajay Nair

Ajay Nair obtained his Bachelor’s degree in  Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India.

Hemalatha R

R. Hemalatha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India. Her area of interest includes Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, Image Processing, and IoT.

P Sangeetha

P. Sangeetha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering,  Tamilnadu, India. She completed her B.E (Civil), MS (Research), and Ph.D from college of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University. Her area of interest includes composite space truss, steel concrete composite, cold formed steel sections and finite element analysis.

Harish Kumar K

Harish Kumar Kobtained his Bachelor’s degree in Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India.

Dinesh Kumar P

P. Dinesh Kumar , obtained his Bachelor’s degree in  Department of Civil Engineering from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India.

Inakota Sai Sahith

Sai Sahith I, obtained his Bachelor’s degree in  Department of Civil Engineering from Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India.

S. Radha

S. Radha is the Professor and Head of the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India. Her area of interest includes Wireless Sensor networks, energy harvesting devices, MEMS, NEMS, IoT and cognitive radios.