Infrastructure is subject to continuous ageing. This has given life cycle management of infrastructure an increasing role. Reliable inspection and monitoring tools are therefore an increasing demand. A combination of different non-destructive test methods is often necessary to receive reliable results for material characterization,
flaw detection and the determination of component specific geometry parameters.
Regarding concrete structures thickness measurements are combined with flaw detection and additional information about reinforcement and tendon ducts is required.
Therefore, a multi-sensor measurement approach is necessary with a high degree of automation. Otherwise a time consuming succession of manual measurements has to be performed which would prevent practical applications. A modular control and data acquisition approach is described and the application of two different automated measurement devices is shown. The BetoScan system consists of a self-navigating
mobile robot. The system is especially designed for the investigation of reinforced concrete floors exposed to de-icing salts. The data acquisition of the OSSCAR system a multi-sensor scanner is similar to the robot approach. These different applications are based on a similar kernel allowing the modular use of different contact and noncontact sensors. The described general concept of multi-sensor data acquisition and data analysis presented here is not limited to the field of civil engineering applications.
Automated multi-sensor systems in civil engineering for condition assessment of concrete structures
(2012)
Currently at Deutsche Bahn (DB) ultrasonic inspections in maintenance procedures for wheelset axles with a bore hole are, to the greatest possible extent, carried out using automated ultrasonic inspection system. Although the acceptance levels are in accordance with DIN 27201 part 7, the testing results have shown in recent years that in the case of true indications, the effective defect sizes were far below the level of acceptance. Due to this experience it can be assumed that the automated ultrasonic inspection systems are testing substantially more sensitively than required. This increased sensitivity leads to an increase in false indications, generally resulting in the unnecessary demounting of wheelsets. In Research cooperation between Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) and DB the effective flaw detection sensitivity of existing automated ultrasonic inspection system will be determined and the true/false indication ratio optimised. Through systematic investigations with the Probability of Detection method on the existing automated ultrasonic inspection system the results could be directly applied to the optimisation of existing ultrasonic inspections of wheelset axles with a bore hole in maintenance procedures and the level of reliability can be considerably increased.