Long-Term Numerical Analysis of Subsurface Delamination Detection in Concrete Slabs via Infrared Thermography

Abstract

One of the concerns about the use of passive Infrared Thermography (IRT) for structural health monitoring (SHM) is the determination of a favorable period to conduct the inspections. This paper investigates the use of numerical simulations to find appropriate periods for IRT-based detection of subsurface damages in concrete bridge slabs under passive heating along a 1 year of time span. A model was built using the Finite Element Method (FEM) and calibrated using the results of a set of thermographic field inspections on a concrete slab sample. The results showed that the numerical simulation properly reproduced the experimental thermographic measurements of the concrete structure under passive heating, allowing the analysis to be extended for a longer testing period. The long-term FEM results demonstrated that the months of spring and summer are the most suitable for passive IRT inspections in this study, with around 17% more detections compared to the autumn and winter periods in Brazil. By enhancing the possibility of using FEM beyond the design stage, we demonstrate that this computation tool can provide support to long-term SHM.

A Review of Infrared Thermography for Delamination Detection on Infrastructures and Buildings

“…Hiasa et al [159] concluded that seasonal effects were minor on the horizontal plane in Florida. In contrast, Pozzer [173] mentioned that spring and summer were desirable for IRT in Brazil because of high daily ambient temperature change. Therefore, preferred seasons for IRT depend on the region.…”

Novel Damage Index-Based Rapid Evaluation of Civil Infrastructure Subsurface Defects Using Thermography Analytics

“…Civil infrastructure, such as bridges and concrete pavement, requires maintenance to ensure safety and serviceability [1]. Even though concrete is inherently a durable material, civil infrastructures are susceptible to time-dependent deteriorations due to their exposure to various degradation mechanisms such as abrasion, moisture cycles, corrosion of reinforcements, and so on [2,3]. Particularly, subsurface deteriorations are invisible through visual inspection until the defects convert into a severe condition [4].…”

Performance Evaluation of Uncooled UAV Infrared Camera in Detecting Concrete Delamination

“…Due to the recent advancements in infrared sensors, image processing, and UAVs, UAVbased IRT has demonstrated promising results in concrete delamination detection in recent studies [19,[24][25][26][27][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]43,47,49,50]. These studies reported comparable or better results compared to other non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods [23,42,51].…”