Received: 16 September 2017 Revised: 20 June 2018 Accepted: 26 August 2018

DOI: 10.1002/stc.2271

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A novel computer vision-based monitoring methodology for

vehicle-induced aerodynamic load on noise barrier

Yue Pan1 Dalei Wang1 Xiang Shen1 Yusheng Xu2 Zichao Pan1

1
College of Civil Engineering, Tongji
University, Shanghai, China Summary
2
Department of Surveying and Due to the absence of antifatigue design under vehicle-induced aerodynamic
Geo-informatics, Tongji University,
load (VIAL) during the process of structural design, structural failures of noise
Shanghai, China
barriers erected on urban highway viaducts have become a common issue in
Correspondence China. In this paper, a novel VIAL monitoring methodology is proposed, which
Dalei Wang, College of Civil Engineering,
can achieve a remote VIAL measuring only by analysis and application of the
Tongji University. Shanghai, China.
Email: wangdalei@tongji.edu.cn data from a traffic-monitoring camera. To establish this methodology, a VIAL
determinative model and a computer vision system for measuring the vehi-
Funding information
Fundamental Research Funds for the cle running characteristics are developed. The accuracy and reliability of this
Central Universities, Grant/Award methodology have been validated by a field experiment. By comparing with the
Number: 20140794 ; National Natural
results of vehicle-induced aerodynamic pressure (VIAP) from a sensor-based
Science Foundation of China,
Grant/Award Number: 51778472 wind pressure acquisition system, it was found that the systemic root mean
square deviations of maximum and minimum values of VIAP were 12.13% and
10.10%, respectively.

K E Y WO R D S
computer vision, noise barrier, numerical simulation, vehicle identification, vehicle-induced
aerodynamic load (VIAL)

1 I N T RO DU CT ION

Recently, more and more urban highway viaducts have been constructed in China, which result in the traffic noise prob-
lems. Thus, noise barriers are widely used to reduce the traffic noise pollution. The structure of noise barrier is commonly
composed of H-shaped steel columns and plug-in screen boards, which can facilitate the installation and replacement
and lead to the problems of vehicle-induced vibration and early fatigue failure at the same time. An important reason
for this is that the vehicle-induced aerodynamic load (VIAL) on a screen board is not considered in the structural design.
For example, in Chinese specification published by Ministry of Communications of PRC,1 only the natural wind load
on a screen board is considered.2 The standard in United Kingdom to determine wind load on temporary road signs is
also “generally perceived by the industry to be unrealistic, so that no account is taken of vehicle-induced aerodynamic
forces.”3 In AASHTO, although the structural design of noise barrier is well specified, the VIAL is still not considered in
the load list.
Actually, with respect to noise barriers erected along railway lines, train-induced aerodynamic load (TIAL) has been
already fully considered. But the determinative factors of the TIAL on a noise barrier is significantly different from those
of the VIAL. A significant characteristic of TIAL is that stochastic issues almost do not exist due to the identical shape of a
train, fixed train-barrier separation distance, and constant running speed. However, for the VIAL, the traffic condition is

Struct Control Health Monit. 2018;e2271. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/stc © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 of 19
https://doi.org/10.1002/stc.2271
2 of 19 PAN ET AL.

very complicated because of the various vehicle type and random running location and speed of vehicle. Thus, the VIAL
in the case of random traffic flow is very difficult to be determined.
In order to study the effect of the VIAL and fatigue issues of noise barriers, it is essential to accurately determine VIAL
and obtain its characteristics via a long-term monitoring. At present, there are three major methods that can be used to
obtain VIAL. The first one is to use mathematical models to predict the VIAL on roadside objects, for example, traffic
signs4 and pedestrian barriers.5 But its applicability is limited by the hypothesis of a potential flow due to the ignorance
of turbulent effects. The second one is to use sensor-based system to acquire the wind pressure on road-placed plates,6
highway traffic signs overhead,7 or roadside noise barriers.2 At the same time, the corresponding traffic conditions are
recorded separately to establish the relationship with VIAL. This method is unsuitable for long-term VIAL monitoring
due to two main disadvantages: (a) inconvenient to implement and (b) difficult to determine stochastic traffic conditions.
The third one is numerical simulation method, which is widely used in researches on VIAL8-12 and TIAL.13-17 It can fully
simulate a specified vehicle running process. And the certain VIAL can be obtained according to the traffic conditions
such as vehicle type, running speed, and vehicle-barrier separation distance. But it is a nonadaptive method to reflect the
stochastic characteristics of VIAL in an actual traffic flow.
In order to address the disadvantages of the abovementioned methods, in this paper, a novel monitoring methodology
(shown in Figure 1) for VIAL on noise barriers is proposed, based on a computer vision system integrated with VIAL
determinative models. First, a formula (so-called VIAL determinative model) about vehicle-induced aerodynamic pres-
sure (VIAP) coefficient is developed, which can be regarded as a “database” in this methodology. It can be established
by the method of numerical simulation or on-site acquisition. Second, a computer vision system is integrated with a
traffic-monitoring camera and established advanced computer vision algorithms, for example, vehicle identification and
image processing, which is used to capture and measure the key parameters for “database” querying and VIAL calculation.
Finally, a remotely VIAL acquisition is achieved by performing the following steps:
– Use the computer vision system to identify the moving vehicle type and measure its running speed and
vehicle-barrier separation distance.
– Feed all obtained parameters to a VIAL determinative model to calculate VIAP coefficients for a noise barrier screen
board.
– Use the obtained VIAP coefficients and measured running speed to calculate the wind pressure.
Comparing with the traditional sensor-based methods, the proposed methodology can achieve a remotely VIAL
acquisition with lower cost, less maintenance, and more feasible implementation.

FIGURE 1 Framework of methodology

PAN ET AL. 3 of 19

2 VIAL DETERMINAT IVE MODEL

2.1 Model definition

Usually, the VIAP can be calculated by the following formula:
1
P = Cp 𝜌𝜈 2 , (1)
2
where P is VIAP and its unit is Pa, Cp is a dimensionless VIAP coefficient, v is the running speed of a vehicle, and 𝜌 is air
density (1.225kg/m3 is used in this paper).
Several previous studies proved that with respect to a specified noise barrier structure and a given type of moving vehicle,
the VIAP coefficient Cp is mainly related to vehicle-barrier separation distance d and the height of a measuring point h,
because the vehicle-induced vibration responses of noise barriers are significantly influenced by the extreme values of Cp .
Thus, for a specified case (m) with a certain noise barrier structure and a given type of vehicle, the VIAL determinative
model can be defined as the following expression:
Cpm = 𝑓 (h, d), d ∈ D, (2)
where D is the valid interval of d.
Moreover, with regard to a specific height, Equation 2 can be simplified to a 1D expression:
Cpm (h) = 𝑓 (d), d ∈ D. (3)

Based on this, in order to specify the form of this expression, a process of function fitting based on a lot of Cp data is
necessary. Usually, Cp can be obtained via an on-site test. However, due to its disadvantages, involving limited number of
measuring points, high cost, insufficiency to obtain big data, and difficulties in driving and safety problems, a numerical
simulation technique is commonly used. In this paper, based on the fluid analysis software FLUENT, a numerical sim-
ulation method is used to obtain the Cp data for the VIAL determinative model fitting. Additionally, due to the vehicle
shape is one of the sensitive parameters in VIAL calculation, a stereovision method is also integrated to generate more
refined 3D vehicle model to improve the precision of numerical simulation.

2.2 Mesh model

2.2.1 Vehicle mesh model
It is difficult to measure the details of existing vehicle shapes (such as the streamline of a vehicle body and the inclination
angle of a windscreen); hence, a 3D reconstruction technique is used to model vehicle surface. Using photogrammetry
and a set of images captured by uncalibrated cameras, the process of vehicle 3D model generation and model meshing
are shown in Figure 2.
• Structure from motion
A structure from motion (SfM) approach18 is first used to estimate 3D structures from the image sequence and out-
puts a sparse points cloud. Specifically, with the given N vehicle images {Q1 , Q2 , … , QN } with reasonable overlaps,
seen in the first row in Figure 2, the pairs of two image {Qi , Qj } are generated at first by extracting the feature points
and robustly matching. Second, to construct M tracks {X1 , X2 , ...XM }, match the features across multiple images.
Third, for each Xi , estimate the camera projection matrices P1 , P2 , … , PN by Equation 4 until all the cameras are
estimated.
Pi = Ki [Ri |ti ], (4)
where Ki is the intrinsic parameter and Ri and ti are rotation and transition matrix, respectively.
Finally, compute the 3D position for each track Xi by iteratively optimization approach using Equation 5. The sparse
points cloud is obtained; see the second row in Figure 2.
∑
min d(x̃i , P̃ X̃ i )2 . (5)
i=1,2,· · ·,M

• Semiglobal matching
Semiglobal matching (SGM)19 is used to obtain dense points cloud from pairs of calibrated images for detailed surface
modeling; see the third row in Figure 2. SGM tries to find correspondences for every pixel by combining the concepts
4 of 19 PAN ET AL.

FIGURE 2 Process of vehicle mesh modeling. (a) Toyota COASTER; (b) Ford Transit; (c) Buick Lacrosse

of global and local stereo methods to achieve an accurate and efficient matching result, which is supported by a
global cost function optimized in eight path directions across the whole image. The overall algorithm considers two
main steps: matching cost calculation and pathwise aggregation. The matching cost is used to measure the similarity
between corresponding pixels, which is usually conducted by means of mutual information20 and census.21 The
pixel-wise mutual information matching cost is proved to be very suitable for the rotated or scaled images, but it does
not scale well with increasing radiometric depth because of the sparser joint histogram. By considering the local
PAN ET AL. 5 of 19

neighborhood only, census can handle the local radiometric changes well. Nevertheless, for the unrectified image
pairs, it lacks robustness due to the affine transformation of the local neighborhood. Here, the final cost function
used is 6. The optimization of this cost function is performed in 1D only, which can be regarded as a NP complete
problem and solved by dynamic programming.

∑ ∑ ∑
E(D) = (C(p, Dp ) + P1 T[|Dp − Dq ] = 1] + P2 T[|Dp − Dq | > 1]), (6)
p q∈Np q∈Np

where p and q are pixel points, Np indicates the neighbor points of p, and D is the disparity map. P1 and P2 are cost
coefficients. With respect to the aggregation of matching cost, it is computed along eight paths from all directions
and met at each pixel. Along each path, the cost information is aggregated until reaching a pixel with a certain
disparity. Then the aggregated costs of all the paths are summed together. For each pixel, the disparity with lowest
cost is selected as the final disparity, namely, the winner-take-all strategy.
• Triangulated irregular network (TIN) mesh
A TIN22 is a digital data structure used for the representation of a surface on the basis of points cloud (see the fourth
row in Figure 2), which is a vector-based representation and made up of irregularly distributed nodes and lines with
three-dimensional coordinates (x, y, and z) that arranged in a network of nonoverlapping triangles. A TIN consists of
a triangular network of vertices, known as mass points, with associated coordinates in three dimensions connected
by edges to form a triangular tessellation. Three-dimensional visualizations are readily generated by the rendering
of the triangular facets. In regions where there is little variation in surface height, the points may be widely spaced,
whereas in areas of more intense variation in 3D coordinates, the point density is increased. A TIN is typically based
on a Delaunay triangulation, which maximize the minimum angle of all the angles of the triangles in the triangu-
lation. Nevertheless, it is not possible to avoid errors (such as surface holes and mixtures with other environmental
features), due to light conditions and camera angles. Therefore, to enclose the vehicle surface, a boundary filter and
hole repairing semiautomatic algorithm are also applied for a smooth model by ignoring windscreen wipers, door
handles, and tires; see the fifth row in Figure 2.
In this paper, VisualSFM23,24 is adopted for sparse points cloud acquisition, and SURE25 combined with SGM is adopted
for dense points cloud generation. In practice, more than 100 high-resolution images with reasonable overlaps are col-
lected for each vehicle. All images are taken in a uniform illumination environment, by considering a reduction of the
impact of shadows.

2.2.2 Calculation domain mesh

To improve the simulation efficiency without a significant effect on the calculation of pulsating wind pressure on a noise
barrier, several simplifications have to be adopted. Namely, only the adjacent roadside noise barrier is considered, and
the shapes of noise barrier and anticollision wall beneath it are both simplified as a uniform vertical wall. To minimize
computer requirements, the sizes of the entire calculated domain and subdomain in this paper are set to 80m × 40m × 15m
and 40m × 6m × 6m, respectively.
The ICEM-CFD software is used to mesh the model. A hexahedral static grid is used outside the refined zone, and a
tetrahedral dynamic grid is used inside the refined zone to fit complex vehicle shapes as shown in Figure 3b. The interface
of both grid regions are unchangeable. Additionally, the movement of a vehicle is simulated by using a mesh deformation
method implemented with a user-defined function in Fluent. The mesh deformation is based on a local mesh reconstruc-
tion method, which will regenerate the grid, whereas the skewness of the grid is greater than or equal to 0.5. Meanwhile,
the enhanced wall treatment is applied in the treatment of near-wall grids. The Y+ value at the surface of the vehicles,
noise-barrier, and ground ranges between 70 and 200. The grid number of different models is in the approximate range
from 3million to 3.5million. Furthermore, the velocity inlet and the pressure outlet is set in the calculation domain layout
(shown in Figure 3a) for the sole purpose of keeping the pressure of the flow field balanced to avoid divergence. To avoid
excessive interference in the calculation result, the velocity inlet corresponds to 0.01m/s, which leads to a negligible effect
in terms of the whole flow field around vehicles.
6 of 19 PAN ET AL.

FIGURE 3 Calculation domain and meshed model. (a) Calculation domain layout; (b) the mesh

2.3 Numerical simulation

2.3.1 Governing equations
The simulations were based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS). The RNG 𝜅 − 𝜀 model, as shown
in Equations (7)-(9), was used because of its following advantages:
• The equation is solved with an additional term that significantly improves accuracy for rapidly strained flows.
• The turbulent Prandtl numbers are calculated by analytical expressions.
• The effective viscosity is determined by a differential equation.
The continuity equation is as follows:
𝜕u𝑗
= 0. (7)
𝜕x𝑗

The RANS equation is as follows:

( )
𝜕ui 𝜕ui 1 𝜕p 𝜇 𝜕 2 ui 𝜕 ūi ′ ū𝑗 ′
+ 𝜕u𝑗 =− + − + gi . (8)
𝜕xt 𝜕u𝑗 𝜌 𝜕xi 𝜌 𝜕x𝑗 𝜕x𝑗 𝜕x𝑗

The turbulence closure equations for RNG 𝜅 − 𝜀 model are as follows:

( )
𝜕k 𝜕k 1 𝜕 𝜕k G
+ u𝑗 =− 𝛼k 𝜇e𝑓 𝑓 + k −𝜀
𝜕t 𝜕x𝑗 𝜌 𝜕x𝑗 𝜕x𝑗 𝜌
( )
𝜕𝜀 𝜕𝜀 1 𝜕 𝜕𝜀 1 𝜀
+ u𝑗 =− 𝛼𝜀 𝜇e𝑓 𝑓 + C𝜀1 Gk , (9)
𝜕t 𝜕x𝑗 𝜌 𝜕x𝑗 𝜕x𝑗 𝜌 k
( )
C𝜇 𝜌𝜂 3 · (1 − 𝜂∕𝜂0 ) 𝜀2
− C𝜀2 +
1 + 𝛽𝜂 3 k
where uj is the velocity of the jth component, t is time, xj is the coordination of the jth component, 𝜌 is the density of air, 𝜇
is dynamic viscosity, gi is gravitational body force, 𝜇eff is effective turbulent viscosity, and 𝛼 k and 𝛼 𝜀 denote inverse effective
Prandtl numbers for k and 𝜀, respectively. Additionally, 𝜂 is Sk∕𝜀, S is the scalar measurement of the deformation tensor,
and 𝜂 0 , 𝛽, C𝜇 , C𝜀1 , and C𝜀2 are constants specifically assigned to the following values: 𝜂 0 = 4.38, 𝛽 = 0.012, C𝜇 = 0.0845,
C𝜀1 = 1.42, and C𝜀2 = 1.68.

2.3.2 Justification of RNG 𝜿 − 𝜺 turbulence model

To verify the RNG 𝜅 − 𝜀 turbulence model, results from the realizable 𝜅 − 𝜀 model and the RNG 𝜅 − 𝜀 model are
compared in Figure 4a. The time histories of Cp agree well with each other, and the error percentage of the extreme values
PAN ET AL. 7 of 19

FIGURE 4 Comparison of simulation results. (a) Comparison of two turbulence models. (b) Comparison of two scaled meshes

of Cp is less than 0.2%. Additionally, when the mesh is independently considered, the overall mesh scale is halved and
the Y+ values of the vehicle, the noise barrier, and the ground are adjusted in the range of 30 to 100, compared with the
sparse mesh scenario (where Y+ values range between 70 and 200). The computational results in Figure 4b show reliable
grid-independent performance by the RNG 𝜅 − 𝜀 model used in the simulation of VIAL on a noise barrier.

2.3.3 Validation of numerical simulation

To confirm the precision of the numerical simulation method applied in this paper, six field test cases were performed
by adopting three vehicle types with a vehicle-barrier separation distance corresponding to 1.1 or 1.6 m. The values of
Cp obtained from measurements and simulations at two heights (1.248 and 2.506m) are shown in Figure 5. The positive
extreme values of two records are set as the time alignment points. Table 1 lists the extreme values of Cp and the deviations
of the measurements and simulations for each case. The comparison shows that the result of Cp from simulation is in
line with that from field test. Thus, the accuracy of CFD method is acceptable in the VIAL simulations. However, when
compared with the measured values, the positive extreme value of the CFD result for the head wave is smaller and the
negative extreme value is larger. Meanwhile, the trends of results also show the following:
• Aerodynamic pressure at measuring points with the same height exhibit nearly identical extreme values of Cp ,
whereas the higher measuring point is, the smaller its extreme value of Cp will be.
• An increase in the vehicle-barrier separation distance evidently decreases the values of Cp .
Moreover, with respect to the tail wave of the temporal history of Cp , the congruence of the simulation results and the
measured values is less favorable than that of the head wave, due to the difference in vehicle shapes and the influence of
psychological factors on drivers. For example, it is difficult for a driver to keep a vehicle running at a small fixed separation
distance from the noise barrier, and this leads to a deviation in the distance between the numerical simulation and field
tests. Therefore, in terms of a 1.6-m vehicle-barrier separation distance, the numerical simulation results fit better with the
measured values compared with a 1.1-m vehicle-barrier separation distance. Thus, it is easier to control a vehicle passing
by a noise barrier with a larger separation distance. Besides, the deviation ratio shows the smaller volume the vehicle
is, the greater the deviation ratio will be. That is to say, at the same precision level of numerical simulation method, the
simulation results of a small volume vehicle are more sensitive to the deviations, because its Cp value is smaller than the
ones of a big volume vehicle.

2.4 Model fitting

Generally, different height of measuring points corresponds to different VIAL determinative model. In this paper, a mea-
suring point at a height of 1.785 m is considered as an example, and a 1D VIAL determinative model of extreme values of
Cp with the vehicle-barrier separation distance as an independent variable is fitted to establish the “database.”
8 of 19 PAN ET AL.

FIGURE 5 Comparison of simulation results with respect to field measurements. (a) Distance = 1.1 m, Toyota COASTER. (b)
Distance = 1.1 m, Ford Transit. (c) Distance = 1.1 m, Buick Lacrosse. (d) Distance = 1.6 m, Toyota COASTER. (e) Distance = 1.6 m, Ford
Transit. (f) Distance = 1.6 m, Buick Lacrosse

TABLE 1 Summary of validation test cases and extreme values of Cp

Case Car Condition Measured Cp Simulated Cp Deviation Deviation Ratio RMS Devi. Ratio
No. c d(m) h(m) Max Min Max Min Max Min Max (%) Min (%) Max (%) Min (%)
1 1.1 1.248 0.187 −0.254 0.177 −0.277 −0.009 −0.023 −5.0 8.9 10.19 12.32
1 1.1 2.506 0.111 0.094 14.4
Car I

−0.166 −0.19 −0.017 −0.024 −15.4

2 1.6 1.248 0.125 −0.17 0.119 −0.192 −0.006 −0.023 −4.7 13.3
2 1.6 2.506 0.079 −0.118 0.07 −0.132 −0.009 −0.014 −11.5 11.9
3 1.1 1.248 0.16 −0.237 0.145 −0.249 −0.015 −0.012 −9.5 5.0 15.58 8.51
Car II

3 1.1 2.506 0.128 −0.188 0.105 −0.209 −0.023 −0.021 −18.1 10.9
4 1.6 1.248 0.117 −0.179 0.099 −0.195 −0.019 −0.016 −16.0 8.7
4 1.6 2.506 0.09 −0.149 0.074 −0.162 −0.015 −0.013 −17.3 8.4
5 1.1 1.248 0.094 −0.181 0.087 −0.188 −0.006 −0.007 −6.9 3.9 17.96 7.72
Car III

5 1.1 2.506 0.067 −0.157 0.053 −0.171 −0.014 −0.013 −21.4 8.6
6 1.6 1.248 0.065 −0.124 0.055 −0.134 −0.01 −0.01 −15.5 7.8
6 1.6 2.506 0.047 −0.104 0.036 −0.114 −0.011 −0.01 −23.4 9.4
Note. Car I: Toyota COASTER; Car II: Ford Transit; Car III: Buick Lacrosse. d denotes the vehicle-barrier separation distance; h denotes the height of
wind pressure measuring point.

To obtain the 1D VIAL determinative model for these three vehicles, 21 simulation cases with different running param-
eters were performed totally. Seven values of vehicle-barrier separation distance were selected, including 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0,
3.0, 4.0, and 5.0m. The corresponding Cp value of each case is plotted in Figure 6, grouped by vehicle type. Meanwhile, to
obtain the curves, MATLAB Curve Fitting Toolbox is used.
PAN ET AL. 9 of 19

FIGURE 6 Extreme values of Cp dependency curves with typical vehicle-barrier separation distances (height = 1.785 m). (a) Logistic,
Toyota COASTER. (b) Logistic, Ford Transit. (c) Logistic, Buick Lacrosse. (d) Allometric, Toyota COASTER. (e) Allometric, Ford Transit.
(f) Allometric, Buick Lacrosse

TABLE 2 The fitting R-square of equations

Name Cp Toyota COASTER Ford Transit Buick Lacrosse
Logistic Cp,Max 0.99882 0.99960 0.99161
Cp,Min 0.99876 0.99979 0.99962
General allometric Cp,Max 0.99801 0.99770 0.87046
Cp,Min 0.99827 0.99739 0.99737

Following this, to determine the form of the VIAL determinative model, two equations (general allometric and logistic)
were selected for comparison:
Logistic:
A −A
Cpm = A2 + 1 ( )2 p , d ∈ [0.5, 5] . (10)
1 + xd
0

General allometric:
Cpm = A × X B , d ∈ [0.5, 5] . (11)

Table 2 shows values of fitting R-square for two equations. It indicates that the logistic is better than general allometric.
Furthermore, when the design code of a Chinese highway is considered, the width of a road lane typically corresponds
to 3.5m in China, and the lane closest to the noise barrier should keep at least a 0.5-m separation distance with the noise
barrier. Therefore, the valid range of the vehicle-barrier separation distance for the model should be set from 0.5 to 5m.
Thus, the form of VIAL determinative model in this paper is finally established as Equation 10.
10 of 19 PAN ET AL.

3 DETERMINAT ION O F VEHICLE RU NNING CHARACTERISTICS

The determination of a vehicle's running characteristics involves the vehicle identification and the measurement of driv-
ing characteristics parameters. The identification approach mainly includes a machine learning algorithm and a vehicle
type identification method. The machine learning algorithm is used to establish a standard vehicle geometric feature
database, which is used as a reference for vehicle classification. This is followed by analyzing a real-time image captured
by a traffic-monitoring camera to rapidly and accurately recognize the type of vehicle. This study adopts histogram of
oriented gradients (HOG)26 for vehicle description and a random forest (RF) classifier27 for fast vehicle classification.

3.1 Vehicle identification

The identification algorithm is illustrated in Figure 7 in a step-by-step manner. In the process of vehicle identification, a
dense image pyramid is first generated as the first manner displayed. A sliding window classifier is then scanned across
the resized image at each layer, which typically produces multiple overlapping detections (subimages) for each vehicle
instance as the second manner shown. Each detection is projected to a type of vehicle after being fed into a trained
HOG + RF classifier, for example, the third manner shows the visualization of HOG descriptor and the fourth manner
shows the illustration of RF, and then, as the upper image shown in the last manner, the detected vehicle is represented
by a bounding box for its position. Finally, nonmaximum suppression algorithm is applied to remove those overloaded
bounding boxes and the best one is presented in the lower image in the last manner.
In practice, to reduce sampled instance and the timespan of moving sliding window classifier, a region of interest is
manually selected by making its width a little bigger than the width of road and its height is a litter bigger than the length
of the largest vehicle and setting its centroid on the middle of road. See Figure 8.

3.1.1 HOG descriptor extraction

The HOG descriptor is one of the most popular feature descriptors in computer vision. It was originally applied for pedes-
trian detection and exhibits an excellent performance in terms of vehicle detection,28 as the shape or appearance of objects
can often be characterized very well by the distribution of local intensity gradient or edge directions. The HOG is calcu-
lated on a dense grid of uniformly spaced cells and uses overlapping local contrast normalization for improved accuracy.
Generally, the calculation of a HOG descriptor consists of the following four main steps: gradient computation, orien-
tation voting, descriptor blocks, and block normalization. First, Equations (12), (13) are applied to calculate the values
of gradients on x and y directions, respectively. This is followed by calculating the value and direction of local intensity

FIGURE 7 Process of vehicle identification

PAN ET AL. 11 of 19

FIGURE 8 Process of vehicle-barrier separation distance measurement. (a) Input image. (b) Detected vehicle. (c) Distance measurement

gradients, seen in Equations 14 and 15, respectively. In practice, two filters [ − 1, 0, 1] and [1, 0, − 1]T are used to convolute
the original image.
Gx (x, 𝑦) = I(x + 1, 𝑦) − I(x − 1, 𝑦), (12)
G𝑦 (x, 𝑦) = I(x, 𝑦 + 1) − I(x, 𝑦 − 1), (13)
√
G(x, 𝑦) = Gx (x, 𝑦)2 − G𝑦 (x, 𝑦)2 , (14)
G 𝑦 (x, 𝑦)
𝛼(x, 𝑦) = tan−1 ( , (15)
Gx (x, 𝑦)
where x and y is the coordination of point. I(x, y) means the intensity of point (x, y) on image.
Second, the histogram of gradient for each cell, which contains n×n pixels, is computed by a spatial binning processing.
k bins, which means k orientations of gradient from 0◦ to 360◦ , are used to vote the gradients in a specified cell. The value
of each bin in a histogram of gradient is the summary of weighted projection gradient values of pixels. In practice, the bin
size usually is nine and the size of a cell is eight.
Third, the HOGs in a block, which contains m × m cells, are concatenated and normalized. The normalization would
not only reduce the impact of illumination and shadows but also increase the robust of HOG descriptor. In practice, the
size of block is four, and the L − 2 normalization as Equation 16 is applied.
√
v ← v∕ ||v||2 + 𝜀2 , (16)
where 𝜀 is a minimal constant coefficient to specify that the divisor is a nonzero value.
Finally, the HOG descriptor for an image is obtained by concatenating the HOG descriptors of blocks.

3.1.2 RF classifier
The RF classifier is a combination of N tree-structured classifiers, where each is created by vectors independently random-
izing sampled from the input vectors, and each decision tree votes uniformly to select the most popular class to classify
input vectors.29 The RF classifier employed in this paper consists a combination of geometric features at each node to grow
a tree. In the training, a bagging method was used for each feature combination to generate a training set by randomly
drawing N replacement examples with the same size of the original training set.30 In the classification process, if there
are M classes cn (n ∈ 1, 2, · · ·, M) of elements needed to be classified, a sample p achieved M confidence degrees after the
classification, and each confidence degree 𝑓(p,cn ) represents the possibility of the sample p belonging to a certain class cn .
As shown in Figure 7 and Equation 17, the final output fd of the random forest corresponds to the average of the results
from all the decision trees. [ ]
1 ∑
𝑓d = Arg max 𝑓i (p, cn ) . (17)
N i=1,2,· · ·,N

3.2 Driving characteristics measurement

As mentioned in Section 2, in terms of a certain vehicle, the key parameters of VIAL calculation are running speed
and vehicle-barrier separation distance. For measuring the running speed of a vehicle, besides the approach of com-
puter vision-based vehicle tracking method, typically, traffic-monitoring systems installed along the viaducts can directly
capture the speed of vehicle via monitoring the changes in electromagnetic signals.
12 of 19 PAN ET AL.

With respect to vehicle-barrier separation distance measurements, a measuring algorithm is developed (illustrated in
Figure 8).
Specifically, at the beginning of all, a virtual vector line (the yellow line in Figure 8) perpendicular to noise barriers'
line is asked to be set manually to confirm the measuring direction. Thus, a 2D coordinate system is established. For the
convenience of the algorithm description, there are three key points, seen in Figure 8c, in this coordinate system that
are defined:
• PO : the original point of this coordinate system and the intersection point of virtual line (the measuring direction)
and noise barriers' line;
• PS : the intersection point of virtual line and the left edge of the detected vehicle bounding box;
• PE : the first intersection point of virtual line and the vehicle edge (white pixels in binarized image).
Based on these, the algorithm can be described in four steps: A, converting the input colorful image to a gray image,
(b) using the gray image to obtain the vehicle edges by Canny edge detector,31 (c) calculating the coordination of PS and
using an iterator to look for PE starting from PS and following the direction of the virtual line, and (d) calculating the
vehicle-barrier separation distance d by Equation 18:
S √
d= · (xe − xo )2 + (𝑦e − 𝑦o )2 , (18)
N
where xo , yo is the coordination of PO ; xe , ye is the coordination of PE ; and S is the ground real length and N is the length
in pixels of the same line.

4 FIELD TEST AND ANALYSIS

In this section, a series of field tests are reported. These tests were performed to verify the proposed methodology on the
basis of the previously mentioned computer vision methods and the VIAL determinative model of Cp extreme values,
which is formalized via the CFD numerical simulation and discussed in Section 2.
In the field experiments, a total of 23 cases were implemented and three typical vehicles were employed, namely, the
Toyota COASTER, Ford Transit, and Buick Lacrosse as shown in Figure 9. Finally, the acquisition of VIAP extreme values
on a noise barrier was achieved only by analysis and application of the data from a traffic-monitoring camera.

4.1 General information

A segment of a road with two lanes (as shown in Figure 10) in Shanghai was selected for the field test. Its area is 50m×12m.
Noise barriers were placed along each side of the road, and a segment of the noise barrier with a length of 2m and a height
of 3.055m was equipped with sensor-based wind pressure measurement system. A traffic-monitoring system, involving
an electromagnetic blanket and an HD camera located on the top of a 7-m height gantry, is also installed in the test

FIGURE 9 Vehicles used for field experiment. (a) Toyota COASTER. (b) Ford Transit. (c) Buick Lacrosse
PAN ET AL. 13 of 19

FIGURE 10 View of test road. (a) Overall view: shows the full view of the test road, and the specific noise barrier used for wind pressure
measurement is determined. (b) Monitoring view: shows the monitoring view including the GCPs, distance bars, region of interest (ROI),
and the location of specific noise barriers as well as the speed information collected by the video-monitoring system. (c) Noise barrier
structure: shows an illustration of the structure and the positions of sensors

TABLE 3 Camera parameters

Camera type Parameters
Resolution: 2752 × 2256 pixels
1-in. CCD image sensor
H.264 video recording with 25 fps
Auto white balance and ≥ 6500K color temperature
Dual day and night modes auto switchover with multi-LEDs

zone. The camera was used to record the video of a vehicle's passing process and its parameters is listed in Table 3. The
electromagnetic blanket was assigned to act as the trigger to capture the frame while the vehicle is passing by the test zone.
Meanwhile, it could capture an accurate running speed of vehicles (similar to many automobile over speed monitoring
systems). Thus, the speed of a running vehicle is measured by this system in this experiment. Additionally, three colorful
straight bars were stuck on the road pavement, which can assist a driver, as much as possible, to control a vehicle passing
with a given vehicle-barrier separation distance of 0.5, 1.0, or 1.5m.

4.2 VIAL determinative model of Cp extreme value

The VIAL determinative models of Cp extreme value at measuring points with a height corresponding to 1.785m were
established on the basis of the formalized VIAL determinative model, according to three types of vehicles. The parameters
of Equation 10 are listed in Table 4.

4.3 Vehicle classifier training

A supervised dataset (shown in Figure 11) from extracted frames of traffic-monitoring videos was used to train the
HOG + RF classifier. To prepare the training data, nine videos with a sampling rate corresponding to 25 fps were selected.
14 of 19 PAN ET AL.

TABLE 4 Determined parameters of the vehicle-induced aerodynamic load

determinative model
Cp Variable Toyota COASTER Ford Transit Buick Lacrosse
Cp,max A1 0.70544 0.66229 34.87389
A2 0.03181 0.00940 0.07075
x0 0.48212 0.41531 0.02548
p 1.35515 1.31723 1.92847
R-square 0.99882 0.99960 0.99161
Validity interval of distance: d ∈ [0.5m, 5m]
Cp,min A1 −1.05557 −0.64396 −0.47354
A2 −0.05326 −0.05487 −0.03726
x0 0.42196 0.68182 0.64916
p 1.16891 1.28190 1.23229
R-square 0.99876 0.99979 0.99962
Validity interval of distance: d ∈ [0.5m, 5m]

FIGURE 11 Samples of training dataset. (a) Positive data. (b) Negative data

These videos were recorded prior to the formal field tests, whereas the drivers were familiarizing themselves with the
test environment and testing the traffic-monitoring system. All the positive samples were manually labeled, and negative
samples were randomly generated at multiple scales from background portions.
Additionally, 500 and 300 samples were used for training and testing, respectively. Eighty trees were used to build the
RF classifier. Finally, the average accuracy of classification for Toyota COASTER, Ford Transit, and Buick Lacrosse were
achieved 76.2%, 72.5%, and 83.2%, respectively.

4.4 VIAP acquisition

A total of 23 cases were performed for VIAP acquisition. Speeds of 40, 60, and 80km∕h and vehicle-barrier separation
distances of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5m, respectively, were compiled for the experiments on three vehicles. These condition param-
eters of cases and the relative test results are shown in Table 5. Meanwhile, Figure 12 presents the values of the computed
Cp and measured Cp at different vehicle-barrier separation distance level. It shows that the deviation of both curves is
small, and the curves fit each other very well and that it also reveals (a) the larger shape the vehicle is, the larger Cp value
is and more sensitive the Cp would be; (b) the smaller the vehicle-barrier separation distance is, more sensitive the Cp
would be. Besides, Figures 13 and 14 display the relationship of VIAP measurements with respect to running speed and
vehicle-barrier separation distance, respectively. The diagrams indicate (a) the faster the vehicle runs and the closer the
vehicle is to the noise barriers, the greater the VIAP deviations would be; (b) the minimum values of VIAP are greater
than the maximum values and more sensitive to the measurement errors.
PAN ET AL. 15 of 19

TABLE 5 Summary of cases and test results (h = 1.785 m)

Case Vehicle Conditions Measured Computed Cp Computed VIAP Measured VIAP Deviation Error ratio
No. Type v d
Toyota COASTER v d Max Min Max Min Max Min Max Min Max Min
1 40 0.5 43.0 0.52 0.351 −0.494 30.705 −43.127 31.705 −40.832 −1.000 2.295 3.15% 5.62%
2 40 1.0 41.4 0.91 0.232 −0.343 18.792 −27.810 22.394 −28.491 −3.603 −0.681 16.09% 2.39%
3 40 1.5 46.1 1.60 0.143 −0.228 14.320 −22.860 15.627 −19.364 −1.307 3.496 8.36% 18.06%
4 60 0.5 57.4 0.60 0.319 −0.453 49.683 −70.497 51.002 −68.839 −1.319 1.658 2.59% 2.41%
5 60 1.0 59.3 1.02 0.211 −0.317 35.055 −52.619 37.559 −48.463 −2.504 4.156 6.67% 8.57%
6 60 1.5 61.3 1.15 0.190 −0.290 33.810 −51.556 33.678 −43.107 0.132 8.449 0.39% 19.60%
7 80 1.5 63.4 1.40 0.160 −0.251 30.463 −47.726 32.167 −43.459 −1.704 4.267 5.30% 9.82%
8 40 0.5 49.0 0.75 0.215 −0.331 24.376 −37.610 24.118 −38.981 0.259 −1.371 1.07% 3.52%
9 40 1.0 50.4 1.15 0.145 −0.254 17.373 −30.524 18.598 −29.279 −1.226 1.245 6.59% 4.25%
Ford Transit

10 40 1.5 49.9 1.60 0.104 −0.203 12.226 −23.855 13.019 −22.438 −0.793 1.417 6.09% 6.32%
11 60 0.5 58.3 1.71 0.097 −0.193 15.586 −31.079 18.007 −27.939 −2.421 3.140 13.44% 11.24%
12 60 1.0 60.2 1.00 0.166 −0.279 28.350 −47.705 30.401 −46.308 −2.052 1.397 6.75% 3.02%
13 60 1.5 59.4 1.66 0.100 −0.198 16.682 −32.942 18.178 −29.562 −1.496 3.380 8.23% 11.43%
14 80 1.5 60.4 1.80 0.092 −0.187 15.867 −32.178 18.193 −29.266 −2.326 2.912 12.79% 9.95%
15 40 1.5 44.7 1.60 0.083 −0.145 7.801 −13.718 6.141 −12.813 1.660 0.905 27.03% 7.06%
Buick Lacrosse Transit

16 40 1.0 52.6 0.65 0.138 −0.255 18.050 −33.373 16.040 −33.388 2.010 −0.015 12.53% 0.04%
17 40 0.5 52.5 0.60 0.149 −0.266 19.442 −34.647 19.222 −42.199 0.220 −7.552 1.15% 17.90%
18 60 1.0 64.7 1.18 0.092 −0.179 18.218 −35.319 16.641 −37.085 1.578 −1.766 9.48% 4.76%
19 60 0.5 69.4 0.72 0.126 −0.241 28.685 −54.971 29.509 −63.667 −0.825 −8.696 2.80% 13.66%
20 60 1.5 66.1 1.77 0.081 −0.135 16.626 −27.975 16.134 −30.278 0.492 −2.303 3.05% 7.61%
21 80 1.5 75.4 1.72 0.081 −0.138 21.782 −37.130 15.837 −32.992 5.945 4.138 37.54% 12.54%
22 80 1.0 75.1 1.10 0.095 −0.187 25.370 −49.821 24.924 −52.825 0.446 −3.004 1.79% 5.69%
23 80 0.5 76.4 0.65 0.138 −0.255 38.081 −70.407 36.626 −80.609 1.455 −10.202 3.97% 12.66%
Root mean square deviation 2.03 4.36 12.13% 10.10%
Note. v denotes running speed, unit: km/h; d denotes vehicle-barrier separation distance, unit: m. Computed VIAP denotes the results of VIAP obtained by the
proposed method, and Measured VIAP denotes the results of VIAP obtained directly by on-site wind-pressure sensors

FIGURE 12 The deviation of Cp (h = 1.785m). (a) Toyota COASTER. (b) Ford Transit. (c) Buick Lacrosse

In addition, the processing time is around 210ms in vehicle identification and 78ms in distance calculation on a laptop
®
with a configuration of Intel Core(TM) i7-7700 @ 2.8 GHz and 16GB memory.

4.5 Discussion of deviations

Even though the results show the root mean square deviations and error ratios are 2.03 Pa and 12.13% for the maxi-
mum value of VIAP and 4.3 Pa and 10.10% for the minimum value of VIAP, respectively, the highest errors still achieved
10.202 Pa (in Case 23) and the high error ratios are 37.54% (in Case 21) and 27.03% (in Case 15). For the main reason there
16 of 19 PAN ET AL.

FIGURE 13 A comparison of computed vehicle-induced aerodynamic pressure (VIAP) and measured VIAP versus running speed
(h = 1.785m). (a) Toyota COASTER. (b) Ford Transit. (c) Buick Lacrosse

FIGURE 14 A comparison of computed vehicle-induced aerodynamic pressure (VIAP) and measured VIAP versus vehicle-barrier
separation distance (h = 1.785m). (a) Toyota COASTER. (b) Ford Transit. (c) Buick Lacrosse

for Case 23, it is that the vehicle moves at a the high running speed and a small vehicle-barrier separation distance, which
leads to the VIAP errors more sensitive to the measuring deviations. Thus, at the same level systemic precision, a bigger
VIAP deviation is obtained in this case. In terms of Cases 21 and 15, the main reason there is that the shape of vehicle is
small and its VIAP is also small, especially the vehicle that ran with a great vehicle-barrier separation distance or small
running speed. It leads to the denominator that is not large in VIAP calculation. Thus, the error ratio becomes very sen-
sitive to a small VIAP deviation. In summary, to obtain the better VIAP measurements by this proposed methodology, it
is very important to improve the precision of the system as much as possible; thus, there are several error resources that
should be noted.

4.5.1 Errors from numerical simulations

In numerical simulation, the final simulation precision are determined by two important parts. One is the precision
of vehicle mesh model and another one is the series parameters used in numerical simulation. Specifically, the higher
precision the mesh models of vehicle is, the higher accuracy the simulated results would be. To obtain a higher precision
vehicle model, the photogrammetry method, instead of manual modeling, is integrated in this methodology. Thus, the
counts of vehicle images, the distortion of camera, and the imaging environment of uniform light would impact the
final precision. The sensitivity of key parameters used in the numerical simulations should be verified by the result of
field test.
PAN ET AL. 17 of 19

4.5.2 Errors from imaging quality

The quality of image is restricted by the hardware specifications and imaging conditions, such as camera resolution, the
location of camera, the vibrations of camera, and the illumination environment. Specifically, “in field measurements, the
camera itself is often subjected to ambient vibration (wind, traffic, etc.), causing displacement measurement errors.”32 The
movement can be eliminated by comparing the relationships of the before and after images or canceled by subtracting
the displacement to a reference stationary. Besides, the resolution and location camera influences the real size of a pixel,
which determine the precision of vehicle-barrier separation distance measuring. Meanwhile, the environment of imaging
is also a big challenge in real application, because the low-light condition will decrease the precision. For the rainy, snowy,
or foggy days, the optical cameras can be affected in different extent or even invalidated too. Thus, the different strategies
and the determinations of parameters in different working conditions need more considerations and researches.

4.5.3 Errors from vehicle identification

Vehicle identification can be broken down into two parts: detection and classification. In detection, the number of layers
in pyramid generation and the length of sliding window moving step impacts the location of bounding box, which is
sensitive for vehicle-barrier separation distance measuring. In classification, all of the important factors, including the
size of training dataset, numbers of vehicle classes, and the selection of threshold, will impact the final accuracy and
precision. Therefore, all of these factors need to be decided according to local conditions.

4.5.4 Errors from vehicle-barrier separation distance measuring

Because the Canny edge detection is applied, the accuracy of edge extraction impacts the final result. Once the edge is
detected mistakenly, this measuring algorithm will fail and will lead to a mistaken calculation. Therefore, the selection
of threshold values is important. Especially, at night or under the low-light condition, the upper bound threshold and
lower bound threshold should be determined carefully. Besides, the running direction of a vehicle usually is not parallel
to the plane of noise barriers. Thus, the parameters of the real length of a pixel and the direction of virtual line should be
determined as precisely as possible.

4.5.5 Errors from running speed measuring

In this paper, the running speed of vehicle is measured by the traffic-monitoring system. It measures the speed via an
electromagnetic method. However, the stability of the hardware system and communication system will significantly
influence the measurements. For instance, a synchronization problem even leads to the mistakes of VIAL calculation.

5 CO N C LUSION S

In this paper, a novel computer vision-based monitoring methodology is proposed to obtain a VIAL on a noise barrier. As
previously mentioned, three key parameters of a vehicle (type or shape, vehicle-barrier separation distance, and running
speed) dominate the VIAL value. The computer vision technique developed in this paper was successfully used to obtain
these key parameters. This technique was then integrated with a VIAL numerical simulation on the basis of CFD method
to collect VIAP on noise barrier screens. A specific VIAL determinative model was proposed to compute extreme VIAL
values. A stereo vision technique was applied to build a detailed vehicle surface model. Vehicle detection and classification
based on a HOG descriptor and RF classifier were used to recognize running vehicles. The feasibility and accuracy of the
methodology was verified through a field experiment.
Comparing with the traditional sensor-based methods, the proposed methodology can achieve a remote VIAL acquisi-
tion only by analysis and application of the data from a traffic-monitoring camera. Under the large-scale traffic-monitoring
network in China, the characteristics of its hardware and software configurations allow this methodology to be applied
with lower cost, less maintenance, and more feasible implementation. Although this method has great application poten-
tial and social value, for the establishment of VIAL probabilistic models, long-term VIAL monitoring data are necessary,
which are also relevant to the antifatigue design of noise barrier. Thus, this method still needs to be improved to be more
general and robust.
In the future, more VIAL determinative models for various types of vehicles and noise barriers, as well as applying the
proposed methodology to a real highway bridge or viaducts, will be studied.
18 of 19 PAN ET AL.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The methodology described in this paper was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant 51778472) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 20140794). The authors also
would like to express their gratitude to Shanghai Zhongchi Group Co., Ltd., for their support and assistance during the
experiments.

ORCID

Dalei Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9093-7494

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How to cite this article: Pan Y, Wang D, Shen X, Xu Y, Pan Z. A novel computer vision-based monitoring
methodology for vehicle-induced aerodynamic load on noise barrier. Struct Control Health Monit. 2018;e2271.
https://doi.org/10.1002/stc.2271