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21. Synthesis of Noninvasive Digital-Image Based Remote Sensing Strategies for Condition Assessment and Simulation of Infrastructure

Presenters Name: 
Hong Liang
Co Presenters Name: 
Primary Research Mentor: 
Devin Harris
Session: 
1
Grant Program Recipient: 
USOAR Program
Abstract: 

Improving infrastructure inspection methods and the ability to assess their conditions is a developing priority as the age of American infrastructure increases and their condition deteriorates. Current inspection techniques are labor-intensive subjective measures for quantifying this deterioration of structural elements, and may require traffic disruptions, total lane closures or other disruptive approaches that do not holistically display the structure's behavior. Digital imaging and photogrammetry provide a pathway for realistically modelling both individual components and constructing an object that can be studied off-site. The purpose of this work is to evaluate and construct a workflow capable of bringing interactivity and physical simulation to these objects as a method of visualizing infrastructure deterioration and analyzing potential damage. Virtual Reality technology using Unity 3D's engine is the current visualization environment from which interactions can be layered onto. The digital representation of infrastructure can be divided into separate meshes and volumes under which another finite element analysis program can simulate the expected deformation and strain that components under a defined force can experience, which is integrated into Unity along with VR controlled interactions to create a model that can be analyzed off site. The only required on-site collection are photographs as an initial data set which can be conjoined with other Digital Image Processing techniques such as a crack detection algorithm. Ultimately, this is a framework for creating flexible, transferable models optimized for multiple stress type analyses that can lower the ease of structural documentation and widen the understanding of many structures conditions.