Curvature-enabled analytical method for bending-induced crack location prediction

Abstract

Condition assessment of civil infrastructure damaged by naturaldisasters with insufficient structural information has been a challenge for engineers. This paper proposes an analytical method to predict bending-induced crack locations on damaged reinforced concrete (RC) beams merely using curvature characteristics obtained from vision-based technologies. Firstly, critical equations that calculate minimum crack spacing followed by bending curvature information are derived through bond-slip theory and assumed boundary conditions. Secondly, a prediction procedure is proposed using derived critical equations to determine bending-induced crack locations. Two RC beam specimens under four-point bending were investigated to verify the validity and accuracy of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the combination of vision-based technologies and the analytical method proposed in this research has great potential in structural inspection and safety evaluation in field.