• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.371-393
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• 2023

Crack detection in structures plays a vital role in ensuring their safety, durability, and reliability. Traditional crack detection methods sometimes need significant manual inspections, which are laborious, expensive, and prone to error by humans. Deep learning algorithms, which can learn intricate features from large-scale datasets, have emerged as a viable option for automated crack detection recently. This study presents an in-depth review of crack detection methods used till now, like image processing, traditional machine learning, and deep learning methods. Specifically, it will provide a comparative analysis of crack detection methods using deep learning, aiming to provide insights into the advancements, challenges, and future directions in this field. To facilitate comparative analysis, this study surveys publicly available crack detection datasets and benchmarks commonly used in deep learning research. Evaluation metrics employed to check the performance of different models are discussed, with emphasis on accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Moreover, this study provides an in-depth analysis of recent studies and highlights key findings, including state-of-the-art techniques, novel architectures, and innovative approaches to address the shortcomings of the existing methods. Finally, this study provides a summary of the key insights gained from the comparative analysis, highlighting the potential of deep learning in revolutionizing methodologies for crack detection. The findings of this research will serve as a valuable resource for researchers in the field, aiding them in selecting appropriate methods for crack detection and inspiring further advancements in this domain.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.779-789
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• 2021

Cracks in railway sleeper are an inevitable condition and has a significant influence on the safety of railway system. Although the technology of railway sleeper condition monitoring using machine learning (ML) models has been widely applied, the crack recognition accuracy is still in need of improvement. In this paper, a two-stage method using edge detection and convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed to reduce the burden of computing for detecting cracks in railway sleepers with high accuracy. In the first stage, the edge detection is carried out by using the 3×3 neighborhood range algorithm to find out the possible crack areas, and a series of mathematical morphology operations are further used to eliminate the influence of noise targets to the edge detection results. In the second stage, a CNN model is employed to classify the results of edge detection. Through the analysis of abundant images of sleepers with cracks, it is proved that the cracks detected by the neighborhood range algorithm are superior to those detected by Sobel and Canny algorithms, which can be classified by proposed CNN model with high accuracy.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.47-65
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• 2012

The presence of crack-like defects in mechanical and structural elements produces failures during their service life that in some cases can be catastrophic. So, the early detection of the fatigue cracks is particularly important because they grow rapidly, with a propagation velocity that increases exponentially, and may lead to long out-of-service periods, heavy damages of machines and severe economic consequences. In this work, a non-destructive method for the detection and identification of elliptical cracks in shafts based on stress wave propagation is proposed. The propagation of a stress wave in a cracked shaft has been numerically analyzed and numerical results have been used to detect and identify the crack through the genetic algorithm optimization method. The results obtained in this work allow the development of an on-line method for damage detection and identification for cracked shaft-like components using an easy and portable dynamic testing device.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.727-739
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• 2018

Crack is the most common typical feature of concrete deterioration, so routine monitoring and health assessment become essential for identifying failures and to set up an appropriate rehabilitation strategy in order to extend the service life of concrete structures. At present, image segmentation algorithms have been applied to crack analysis based on inspection images of concrete structures. The results of crack segmentation offering crack information, including length, width, and area is helpful to assist inspectors in surface inspection of concrete structures. This study proposed an algorithm of image segmentation enhancement, named morphological segmentation based on edge detection-II (MSED-II), to concrete crack segmentation. Several concrete pavement and building surfaces were imaged as the study materials. In addition, morphological operations followed by cross-curvature evaluation (CCE), an image segmentation technique of linear patterns, were also tested to evaluate their performance in concrete crack segmentation. The result indicates that MSED-II compared to CCE can lead to better quality of concrete crack segmentation. The least area, length, and width measurement errors of the concrete cracks are 5.68%, 0.23%, and 0.00%, respectively, that proves MSED-II effective for automatic measurement of concrete cracks.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.449-456
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• 2019

This paper is a study on the construction of a wall-climbing mobile robot using vacuum suction and wheel-type movement, and a comparison of the performance of an automatic wall crack detection algorithm based on machine learning that is suitable for such an embedded environment. In the embedded system environment, we compared performance by applying recently developed learning methods such as YOLO for object learning, and compared performance with existing edge detection algorithms. Finally, in this study, we selected the optimal machine learning method suitable for the embedded environment and good for extracting the crack features, and compared performance with the existing methods and presented its superiority. In addition, intelligent problem - solving function that transmits the image and location information of the detected crack to the manager device is constructed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.385-395
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• 2022

Detecting cracks on a concrete structure is crucial for structural maintenance, a crack being an indicator of possible damage. Conventional crack detection methods which include visual inspection and non-destructive equipment, are typically limited to a small region and require time-consuming processes. Recently, to reduce the human intervention in the inspections, various researchers have sought computer vision-based crack analyses: One class is filter-based methods, which effectively transforms the image to detect crack edges. The other class is using deep-learning algorithms. For example, convolutional neural networks have shown high precision in identifying cracks in an image. However, when the objective is to classify not only the existence of crack but also the types of cracks, only a few studies have been reported, limiting their practical use. Thus, the presented study develops an image processing procedure that detects cracks and classifies crack types; whether the image contains a crazing-type, single crack, or multiple cracks. The properties and steps in the algorithm have been developed using field-obtained images. Subsequently, the algorithm is validated from additional 227 images obtained from an open database. For test datasets, the proposed algorithm showed accuracy of 92.8% in average. In summary, the developed algorithm can precisely classify crazing-type images, while some single crack images may misclassify into multiple cracks, yielding conservative results. As a result, the successful results of the presented study show potentials of using vision-based technologies for providing crack information with reduced human intervention.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.1107-1132
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• 2015

A damage detection algorithm based on neuro fuzzy hybrid system is presented in this study for location and severity predictions of cracks in beam-like structures. A combination of eigenfrequencies and rotation deviation curves are utilized as input to the soft computing technique. Both single and multiple damage cases are considered. Theoretical expressions leading to modal properties of damaged beam elements are provided. The beam formulation is based on Euler-Bernoulli theory. The cracked section of beam is simulated employing discrete spring model whose compliance is computed from stress intensity factors of fracture mechanics. A hybrid neuro fuzzy technique is utilized to solve the inverse problem of crack identification. Two different neuro fuzzy systems including grid partitioning (GP) and subtractive clustering (SC) are investigated for the highlighted problem. Several error metrics are utilized for evaluating the accuracy of the hybrid algorithms. The study is the first in terms of 1) using the two models of neuro fuzzy systems in crack detection and 2) considering multiple damages in beam elements employing the fused neuro fuzzy procedures. At the end of the study, the developed hybrid models are tested by utilizing the noise-contaminated data. Considering the robustness of the models, they can be employed as damage identification algorithms in health monitoring of beam-like structures.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.155-163
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• 2019

This paper proposes a new methodology to recognize cracks on asphalt road surfaces using the image data obtained with drones. The target section was Yuseong-daero, the main highway of Daejeon. Furthermore, two object detection algorithms, such as Tiny-YOLO-V2 and Faster-RCNN, were used to recognize cracks on road surfaces, classify the crack types, and compare the experimental results. As a result, mean average precision of Faster-RCNN and Tiny-YOLO-V2 was 71% and 33%, respectively. The Faster-RCNN algorithm, 2Stage Detection, showed better performance in identifying and separating road surface cracks than the Yolo algorithm, 1Stage Detection. In the future, it will be possible to prepare a plan for building an infrastructure asset-management system using drones and AI crack detection systems. An efficient and economical road-maintenance decision-support system will be established and an operating environment will be produced.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.5
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• pp.599-610
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• 2021

Early detection of small concrete crack or reinforcement corrosion is necessary for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Global vibration based methods are advantageous over local methods because of simple equipment installation and cost efficiency. Among vibration based techniques, FRF based methods are preferred over modal based methods. In this study, a new coupled method using frequency response function (FRF) and proper orthogonal modes (POM) is proposed by using the dynamic characteristic of a damaged beam. For the numerical simulation, wave finite element (WFE), coupled with traditional finite element (FE) method is used for effectively incorporating the damage related information and faster computation. As reported in literature, hybrid combination of wave function based wave finite element method and shape function based finite element method can addresses the mid frequency modelling difficulty as it utilises the advantages of both the methods. It also reduces the dynamic matrix dimension. The algorithms are implemented on a three-dimensional reinforced concrete beam. Damage is modelled and studied for two scenarios, i.e., crack in concrete and rebar corrosion. Single and multiple damage locations with different damage length are also considered. The proposed methodology is found to be very sensitive to both single- and multiple- damage while being computationally efficient at the same time. It is observed that the detection of damage due to corrosion is more challenging than that of concrete crack. The similarity index obtained from the damage parameters shows that it can be a very effective indicator for appropriately indicating initiation of damage in concrete structure in the form of spread corrosion or invisible crack.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.17 no.3 s.87
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• pp.361-368
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• 2005

This study proposes an algorithm for detection and analysis of cracks in digital image of concrete surface to automate the measurement process of crack characteristics such as width, length, and orientation based on image processing technique. The special features of algorithm are as follows: (1) application of morphology technique for shading correction, (2) improvement of detection performance based on enhanced binarization and shape analysis, (3) suggestion of calculation algorithms for width, length, and orientation. A MATLAB code was developed for the proposed algorithm, and then test was performed on crack images taken with digital camera to examine validity of the algorithm. Within the limited test in the present study, the proposed algorithm was revealed as accurately detecting and analyzing the cracks when compared to results obtained by a human and classical method.