Basic Study on Detection of Deteriorated RC Structures Using Infrared Thermography Camera

Abstract

Infrastructures in the world get old in several decades of their service time. Falling-offs of parts of deteriorated structures were often reported and sometimes caused casualties in Japan and many other countries. When an earthquake occurs, in particular, deteriorated structures have higher possibility to be damaged or collapsed. Thus assessing the health condition of structures is one of the important topics in civil engineering. Considering a large number of structures that have been in service more than 40 years in Japan, efficient evaluation methods are requested. In this regard, non-destructive tests have high possibility to be applied to various structures without affecting their functions. Accordingly, this study focuses on the use of infrared thermography to detect internal deterioration of concrete structures. As a first step of investigation, thermography diagnosis, hammer sounding test and Schmidt rebound hammer test were carried out to detect internal deterioration of a concrete retaining wall located in the campus of Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, and the results were compared to evaluate the capability and accuracy of these diagnosis methods.