A Brief Review and a New Graph-Based Image Analysis for Concrete Crack Quantification

Abstract

This paper surveys development using image-based methods for crack analysis in the last two-decade (2002–2016).This study aimed to extract and quantify the individual cracks in concrete surfaces, using a new automated image-based system. In general, an individual crack can appear in concrete structures as one of the three common configurations including longitudinal, transverse, and diagonal cracks. These kinds of cracks propagate inherently as linear, and may be involved in branching and spalling at some point of the original path. The main contribution of this work is twofold. First, the main mother crack is extracted using the graph theory and simulates the crack group proportionally. Second, the exact width of cracks can be measured automatically. The procedure has been automated in this study to calculate the individual crack characteristics including the length, average width, and orientation. Furthermore, the analytical results are presented as the distribution of accurate width variations along the length of the skeleton, maximum crack width and its location on the crack and graph. The results indicated that the proposed image-based crack quantification method can accurately measure changing the crack characteristics like width along it. It is demonstrated that the proposed method is applicable and shows good performance in conventional assessment of distressed concrete surfaces.