Detection of flaws on surface of civil infrastructures and their profiling using imaging system with laser displacement sensor

Civil infrastructures such as buildings, bridges, roads and pipelines are the integral part of people's lives and their failure can have large public safety and economic consequences. Early detection of flaws in civil infrastructures and their appropriate retrofitting will aid in preventing this failure. Flaws such as cracks and impact damages initially occur on the surface and propagate inside the materials causing further degradation. There is a need to develop systems that can detect these surface flaws. Developing a system with one sensing technique which can detect the flaws is a challenging task since infrastructures are made up of diverse materials such as concrete, metal, plastics, composite and timber that have different electrical and mechanical properties. It is also desired that non-plain surfaces with complex profiles can be interrogated and surface flaws can be detected. We have proposed an imaging system capable of interrogating structures with complex surface profiles for the purpose of detection and evaluation of surface flaws such as cracks and impact damages using laser displacement sensor (LDS). The developed system consists of LDS mounted on the scanner which is able to perform raster scan over the specimen under test. The reading of displacement from the sensor head to the laser spot on the surface of the test material is then used to generate images which can be used to detect the surface flaws. The proof of concept is given by testing specimens made of metal, concrete and plastics with complex surface profiles.