Dynamic Structural Health Monitoring using a DIC-enabled Drone

Abstract:

The structural assessment of infrastructure such as bridges and railroads is crucial for their safe operation. The process is expensive and time-consuming given the large amount of structures that require continuous inspection. Over the last decades non-contact measurement techniques have been developed that allow remote evaluation of a structure that is accurate and not labor intensive. One of the major techniques in this field is Digital Image Correlation (DIC) that has proven itself to be an accurate method to measure 2D-3D displacement and strain in structures. In current applications, DIC makes use of a static stereo vision camera system that is rigidly placed close to the inspected object. In this paper, we present an application where a drone is equipped with a DIC camera system and successfully performs remote structural evaluation of a railroad tie. This development significantly increases the portability of DIC resulting in faster deployment of DIC drone measurement systems that can reach remote locations and perform fast and accurate structural health monitoring.