The impact of a PEER funded research project "Framework of Identifying Shear Cracking in Bridge Columns using Lidar" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Jeffrey Berman, University of Washington. The Research Team includes Marc Eberhard, University of Washington.
Download the Research Project Summary which includes the abstract (PDF)
Research Impact:
The use of promising, new technologies within transportation asset management is critical for improving accuracy, efficiency, and safety of the transportation system. Lidar coupled with methods to identify cracks and determine their potential to cause critical failure represents such a modern technology. The framework developed in the proposed research could be important to bridge asset managers across the country. Identifying potential brittle failure of bridge components is critical for prioritizing bridge retrofit and replacement and is a central purpose of asset management.
The proposed research will develop a framework that will aid asset managers by making lidar technology approachable and weeding through the dense literature on crack detection algorithms to make lidar data useful to asset managers. The proposed output for this project is a framework for using lidar to identify the potential for brittle failure in bridge components. The framework will include: (i) recommendations for lidar scanning procedures including necessary point cloud accuracy and resolution, (ii) recommended algorithms for identifying cracks in reinforced concrete bridge components using lidar derived point clouds, (iii) recommendations for identifying potentially brittle failure modes from cracking patterns and amplitudes in reinforced concrete bridge components, and (iv) example applications to bridge columns tested in the UW Structural Research Laboratory.
The figure below shows lidar used to identify and quantify spalling in a reinforced concrete frame building tested on the E-Defense shake in Japan from a paper the PI is a co-author. Similar methods will be used in this project.
The citation for this is: Calvi, P.M., Che, E., Sweet, T., Lowes, L.N., and Berman, J.W. (2024) “Data Collection Using Terrestrial Laser Scanners from the Shake-Table Test of a Full-Scale Reinforced Concrete Building.” Journal of Structural Engineering. 150(2). https://doi.org/10.1061/JSENDH.STENG-12627
