INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTIONAI Can Identify Patterns in Surface Cracking to Assess Damage in Reinforced Concrete Structures

Recent structural collapses, including tragedies in Surfside, Florida, Pittsburgh, New York City and Davenport. Iowa, have centered the need for more frequent and thorough inspections of aging buildings and infrastructure across the country. But inspections are time-consuming, and often inconsistent, processes, heavily dependent on the judgment of inspectors. Researchers at Drexel University and the State University of New York at Buffalo are trying to make the process more efficient and definitive by using artificial intelligence, combined with a classic mathematical method for quantifying web-like networks, to determine how damaged a concrete structure is, based solely on its pattern of cracking.

In the paper “A graph-based method for quantifying crack patterns on reinforced concrete shear walls,” which was recently published in the journal Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, the researchers, led by Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, and Pedram Bazrafshan, a doctoral student in the College, present a process that could help the country better understand how many of its hundreds of thousands of aging bridges, levees, roadways and buildings are in urgent need of repair.

“Without an autonomous and objective process for assessing damage to the many reinforced concrete structures that make up our built environment, these tragic structural failures are sure to continue,” Ebrahimkhanlou said. “Our aging infrastructures are being used beyond their design lifespan, and because manual inspections are time-consuming and subjective, indications of structural damage may be missed or underestimated.”

The current process for inspecting a concrete structure, such as a bridge or a parking deck, involves an inspector visually examining it for cracking, chipping, or water penetration, taking measurements of the cracks, and noting whether or not they have changed in the time between inspections — which may be years. If enough of these conditions are present and appear to be in an advanced state — according to a set of guidelines on a damage index — then the structure could be rated “unsafe.”

In addition to the time it takes to go through this process for each inspection, there is widespread concern that the process leaves too much room for subjectivity to skew the final assessment.