Structural Engineering Commons^™

Quantitative Bridge Inspection Ratings Using Autonomous Robotic Systems, Anil Agrawal

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

The 2001 study sponsored by FHWA raised serious concern on the consistency and reliability of visual inspection. Although consistent ratings can be obtained with a good QA/QC program, based on a recent study by the PI, the concern for reliability of defect detection remains. With the adoption of the recent AASHTO Manuel for Bridge Element Inspection, the new inspection approach not only requires rating for bridge elements, but also the location and extent of deterioration. Since autonomous robotic systems generate an enormous amount of inspection data, deducing from the data to a simple rating along with the location and extent …

Hyperspectral Image Analysis For Mechanical And Chemical Properties Of Concrete And Steel Surfaces, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from approximately 400 to 700 nm. A hyperspectral camera can extend the wavelength to as high as 2500 nm. This extension will allow engineers to find objects, identify materials, and detect processes on structural surface, which cannot be done with visual inspection.

This project aims to develop an open-source catalogue of concrete and steel surfaces and their spectral/spatial features (discoloration, characteristic wavelength, roughness, texture, shape, etc.), extract spatial/spectral features of hyperspectral images, and develop/train a multi-class classification or regression classifier through machine learnings (supervised and/or semi-supervised), and validate the classifier as a …

3d Microwave Camera For Concrete Delamination And Steel Corrosion Detection, R. Zoughi

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Corrosion of embedded steel reinforcement in concrete leads to concrete cracking and delamination, followed by increased salt and moisture permeation and further damage. Invisibility of the embedded rebar in combination with physical inaccessibility in elevated bridges presents a challenge in the assessment of RC bridge elements. Wideband (3D) microwave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging techniques that can be integrated into a UAV offer a practical solution to overcome this challenge.

This project aims to develop and optimize a 3D microwave camera for bridge inspection on a UAV platform, quantify its performance for steel corrosion evaluation and concrete delamination detection in …

Thermally-Stable Passive Antenna Sensor For Strain And Crack Monitoring, Dan Li, Yang Wang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

An RFID patch antenna sensor can be used to wirelessly measure the strain and/or crack on a structural surface through the shift of its electromagnetic resonance frequency. According to electromagnetic theory, the resonance frequency �_R of a patch antenna has an approximately linear relationship with strain �: [Formula]

Previous design of antenna sensor with Rogers RT/duroid® 5880 substrate is sensitive to temperature change. A new RFID patch antenna sensor with thermally-stable substrate material Rogers RT/duroid® 6202 is designed and tested through both numerical simulation and laboratory experiments. A new RFID chip with much smaller footprint is adopted in the …

Deep Semantic 3d Visual Metric Reconstruction Using Wall-Climbing Robot, Liang Yang, Bing Li, Yong Chang, Jizhong Xiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This project introduces an inspection method using a deep neural network to detect the crack and spalling defects on concrete structures performed by a wall-climbing robot. First, we create a pixel-level semantic dataset which includes 820 labeled images. Second, we propose an inspection method to obtain 3D metric measurement by using an RGB-D camera-based visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which is able to generate pose coupled key-frames with depth information. Therefore, the semantic inspection results can be registered in the concrete structure 3D model for condition assessment and monitoring. Third, we present our new generation wall-climbing robot to perform …

Modeling Hose Dynamics For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Blake Hament, Paul Y. Oh, Autonomous Systems Lab (Dasl)

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridges and other large pieces of infrastructure accumulate massive amounts of dirt, dust, and other particulates that can obscure the structure when scanning to discern structural integrity. Traditionally, these particulates have been removed by humans operating handheld compressed-air hoses, often while mounting ladders -- a risky and inefficient task. To improve infrastructure scanning, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with hoses could be used to clean the structure in place of the current method.

The challenge in equipping a UAV with a hose is compensating for the reaction forces and torques produced by fluids expelled by the hose. In order to …

Parallel Manipulator-Gripper For Mobile Manipulating Uavs, Dongbin Kim, Paul Y. Oh, Autonomous Systems Lab (Dasl)

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are originally developed for military, but have been developed over time to time for valuable roles in surveillance, work-assistant, and intelligence for both civilian and military operations.

The ability of UAVs that manipulate or carry objects can expand the type of tasks achieved by unmanned aerial systems. High degree of freedom robots with dexterous arm can lead to various applications. Most of manipulators are serial, each motor on each joint affects on stabilizing UAVs. Our lab , DASL , has presented parallel mechanism manipulator for UAVs. It results in less impact on center of gravity(CoG) of …

Bridge Resilience Assessment With Inspire Data, Yijian Albert Zhang, Reginald Desroches, Iris Tien

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this research, we proposed analytical models validated with numerical results to assess how inspection-collected data on corrosion can be used to update bridge models and predict performance under future events. A detailed investigation of the vulnerability of bridges due to corrosion at both component and global levels. The results show the impact of corrosion-induced degradation on the seismic fragility of reinforced concrete columns under various failure modes, e.g., flexural, shear, and lap-spliced failures. As increasing amounts of data are collected on the states of bridges, the results show how these data can be used to update bridge assessments and …

Uav-Enabled Measurement On Magnetic Field Of Smart Rocks For Bridge Scour Monitoring, Haibin Zhang, Zhaochao Li, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Scour and other hydraulic induced failures accounted for 58% of over 1,500 bridge collapses in the U.S. Bridge scour is the engineering term for the erosion of soil surrounding a bridge foundation as a result of water current. Monitoring with fixed and/or portable instrumentations is one of the most effective measures in mitigating scour hazards. However, fixed instrumentation with sensors installed prior to flood events cannot detect scour other than the area instrumented. It is susceptible to the harsh environment during a flood event. Portable instrumentation is difficult to deploy during a severe flood event due to safety consideration and/or …

Hyperspectral Image Analysis For Mechanical And Chemical Properties Of Concrete And Steel Surfaces, Liang Fan, Paul Manley, Huaishuai Shang, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongyan Ma, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

According to the 2017 ASCE Report Card, 39% and 15% of 614,387 bridges in the U.S. are more than 50 years and 40 to 49 years, respectively. The number of deficient bridges is increasing. One of the most common causes of reinforced concrete deterioration is corrosion of steel reinforcing bars. Currently, most bridges are visually inspected every two years using boom/snooper trucks to get access to various areas to be inspected. The subjective visual inspection often leads to inconsistent results that are less useful in bridge management. Hyperspectral camera, installed on an unmanned aerial vehicle, can potentially supplement visual inspection …

Integrated Fiber Optic Sensors For Strain, Temperature And Corrosion-Induced Mass Loss Measurement, Chuanrui Guo, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, a fiber optic sensing system based on long period fiber gratings (LPFG) in LP06 and LP07 modes is designed, fabricated and tested for simultaneous measurements of strain, temperature and corrosion-induced mass loss. It consists of three steel tubes and several Fe-C coated LPFG sensors for long- and short-term corrosion monitoring, respectively, when deployed in proximity and parallel to a steel member. Graphene/silver nanowire (Gr/AgNW) composite was coated on the LPFG surface for efficient Fe-C electroplating due to its high optical transparency and conductivity. The sensor was subjected to both tensile strain and temperature, and submerged in 3.5 …

Microwave Imaging For Corroded Rebars And Delamination In Concrete Structures, Matthew Dvorsky, Stephon Barker, Mohammad Tayeb Ahmad Ghasr, R. Zoughi

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Corrosion of embedded steel reinforcement bars (rebars) in concrete leads to concrete cracking and delamination, which in turn leads to increased salt and moisture permeation and further damage. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of microwave imaging for the characterization of this corrosionand delaminationof steel rebar embedded in concrete.

Battery-Free Antenna Sensors For Strain And Crack Monitoring Of Bridge Structures, Yang Wang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Fatigue cracks need to be monitored in fatigue critical elements. Previous research by the PI produced a radiofrequency identification (RFID) sensor prototype that can accurately measure tens of micro-strains in laboratory. The antenna sensor was made on a glass microfiber-reinforced polymer substrate. Although accurate for strain measurement and detection of fatigue cracks, the sensor performs less satisfactorily in field conditions since the substrate material (RT/duroid® 5880) is susceptible to thermal effect. In addition, a wireless interrogation distance by a general-purpose commercial RFID reader is limited to the order of meter, which is not desirable with the operation of a UAV. …

Uav-Enabled Measurement For Spatial Magnetic Field Of Smart Rocks In Bridge Scour Monitoring, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Foundation scour is the main cause of bridge collapses in the U.S. In 2011, the principal investigator (PI) proposed smart rocks with embedded magnets for bridge scour monitoring. Once deployed around a bridge pier, smart rocks as field agents offer mission-critical information about the maximum depth of a scour hole developed around the bridge foundation – the key parameter that is used to assess foundation stability in engineering design and retrofit. Smart rocks have recently been deployed and tested at three bridge sites in California and Missouri. With multiple measurements, they can be located with an accuracy of 0.5 m. …

Seismic Performance And Retrofit Evaluation Of Hollow-Core Composite Bridge Columns, Mohanad M. Abdulazeez, Ahmed Gheni, Nicholas Colbert, Mohamed Elgawady

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the seismic behavior of large-scale hollow-core fiber-reinforced polymerconcrete-steel (HC-FCS) bridge column. The HC-FCS column consists of a concrete wall sandwiched between an outer fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) tube and an inner thin-walled steel tube. The width-to-diameter ratio for the steel tube was 147. The column had an outer diameter of 24 inches and a height-to-diameter ratio of 4.0. The steel tube was embedded into reinforced concrete footing with an embedded length of 1.25 times the steel tube diameter, while the FRP tube only confined the concrete wall thickness and curtail at the top of the footing level. The …

A Nonlinear Crack Model For Concrete Structure Based On An Extended Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method, Jian-Bo Li, Xin Gao, Xing-An Fu, Chenglin Wu, Gao Lin

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Fracture mechanics is one of the most important approaches to structural safety analysis. Modeling the fracture process zone (FPZ) is critical to understand the nonlinear cracking behavior of heterogeneous quasi-brittle materials such as concrete. In this work, a nonlinear extended scaled boundary finite element method (X-SBFEM) was developed incorporating the cohesive fracture behavior of concrete. This newly developed model consists of an iterative procedure to accurately model the traction distribution within the FPZ accounting for the cohesive interactions between crack surfaces. Numerical validations were conducted on both of the concrete beam and dam structures with various loading conditions. The results …

Identification Of Transportation Infrastructure At Risk Due To Sea Level Rise And Subsidence Of Land In Coastal Louisiana, Sanjay Tewari, Wesley Palmer

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The coast of Louisiana is under threat because of sea level rise and land subsidence. Sea water is encroaching deeper inland and as a result Louisiana is losing at an alarming rate. The combined effect of sea level rise and land subsidence is variable spatially. This paper focuses on this combined effect in identifying the transportation infrastructure that is at risk of getting affected by the sea-water inundation of the land.

This paper is an attempt of taking account of land elevation data monitored continuously at various locations along the coast of Louisiana and combining it with local sea level …

Inelastic Response Evaluation Of Precast Composite Columns Under Seismic Loads, Mohanad M. Abdulazeez, Mohamed Elgawady

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a non-linear finite element analysis of large-scale hollow-core fiber-reinforced polymer-concrete-thin walled steel (HC-FCS) precast columns under reversed cyclic loading. The HC-FCS columns provide an economical and efficient alternative to conventional concrete bridge columns. The precast HC-FCS column consists of a concrete shell sandwiched between an outer fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) tube and an inner thin-walled steel tube. The steel tube diameter-to thickness (D_i/t_s) ratio was 254. The proposed FEA model was developed using LS_DYNA multipurpose software and was verified by experimental results performed in this study. The FE model was used to investigate some …

Climbing Robots For Steel Bridge Inspection And Evaluation, Hung La

INSPIRE Archived Webinars

Steel structures and steel bridges, constituting a major part in civil infrastructure, require adequate maintenance and health monitoring. In the U.S., more than 50,000 steel bridges are either deficient or functionally obsolete, which likely presents a growing threat to people's safety. The collapse of numerous bridges recorded over the past 16 years has shown significant impact on the safety of all travelers.

In this presentation, the design and implementation of two different climbing robots for steel structure inspection are reported. Based on the magnetic wheel design, the robot can climb on different steel surface structures (i.e., flat, cylinder, cube). The …

Ccfss Special Edition Technical Bulletin Summer 2018, Wei-Wen Yu Center For Cold-Formed Steel Structures

CCFSS Technical Bulletins (1993 - 2020)

No abstract provided.

Corrosion Resistance Of Pipeline Steel With Damaged Enamel Coating And Cathodic Protection, Liang Fan, Signo Tadeu Dos Reis, Genda Chen, Michael L. Koenigstein

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the first report on the corrosion resistance of pipeline steel with damaged enamel coating and cathodic protection in 3.5 wt % NaCl solution. In particular, dual cells are set up to separate the solution in contact with the damaged and intact enamel coating areas, to produce a local corrosion resistance measurement for the first time. Enamel-coated steel samples, with two levels of cathodic protection, are tested to investigate their impedance by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and their cathodic current demand by a potentiostatic test. Due to its glass transition temperature, the enamel-coated pipeline can be operated on …

Flexural Rigidity Evaluation Of Seismic Performance Of Hollow-Core Composite Bridge Columns, Mohanad M. Abdulazeez, Mohamed Elgawady

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper investigates experimentally the seismic behavior of two hollow-core fiber-reinforced polymer-concrete-steel HC-FCS columns under cyclic loading as a cantilever. The typical precast HC-FCS member consists of a concrete wall sandwiched between an outer fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) tube and an inner steel tube. The FRP tube provides continuous confinement for the concrete wall along the height of the column. Five large-scale HC-FCS columns were investigated during this study to estimate the effective flexural (which is an important factor to define the buckling capacity and deflection of such columns) and the effective structural stiffness of the composite columns. These columns have …

Program Progress Performance Report #2, Missouri University Of Science And Technology. Inspire - University Transportation Center

Semi-Annual Progress Reports

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Rotational-Lateral Stiffness Of Beam-To-Panel Assemblies, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Effective Area Of Cold-Formed Steel Compression Members, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

North American Standard For Cold-Formed Steel Framing -- Product Data, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Strength And Deformation Characteristics Of Cold-Formed Steel Connections, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Flexural Strength Reduction Factor Of Purlins Supporting A Standing Seam Roof System, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Strength Of A Roof Panel-To-Purlin-To-Anchorage Device Connection, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Test Standard For Determining The Web Crippling Strength Of Cold-Formed Steel Flexural Members, 2017 Edition, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.