Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Early damage detection of fatigue failure for RC deck slabs under wheel
load moving test using image analysis with artificial intelligence
Mohamed Adel a, g, Hiroshi Yokoyama b, Hitoshi Tatsuta b, Takanori Nomura c, Yuki Ando d,
Takuro Nakamura e, Hiroshi Masuya f, Kohei Nagai a, *
a
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
b
Research Institute for Infrastructure Engineering, Nippon Engineering Consultants Co, Ltd, Saitama, Japan
c
Nippon Systemware Co, Ltd, Tokyo, Japan
d
SHO-BOND Technical Research Institute, SHO-BOND Corporation, Tsukuba, Japan
e
Civil Engineering Research Institute for Cold Region, Sapporo, Japan
f
Faculty of Geosciences and Civil Engineering, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
g
Department of Structural Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keyword: Reinforced concrete (RC) bridge decks suffer from cracking damages caused by traffic loading and
RC deck slab environmental-related defects, such as the alkali-silica reaction (ASR). These require inspections involving
ASR damage measuring crack width and density followed by essential maintenance and repair works, however, there are no
Moving wheel loading
signs for fatigue failure. In this study, the out-of-plane shear deformations which cause small delaminations (pits)
AI
Crack density
along surface cracks are proposed as an early indicator for fatigue failure. Thus, un-damaged and ASR-damaged
Pit density RC deck slabs are tested under moving wheel loading and, using image-recognition for surface cracks detection,
the pits along surface cracks are captured using an artificial intelligence (AI) model. The results show that, while
both crack and pit density increase over the fatigue life of un-damaged slabs, there is an earlier sudden increase
in pit density. In the case of the ASR-damaged slab, surface cracking is almost constant over the fatigue life until a
sudden increase just prior to failure. Pit density, however, increases over the fatigue life with an earlier rapid
increase before failure. The density of pits along cracks would be, therefore, a significantly earlier indicator of
fatigue failure than crack density, offering the potential for more efficient and automatable bridge inspections.

1. Introduction fatigue-related structural performance and service life from observed

Surface cracking of in-situ reinforced concrete (RC) bridges is a
serious and common problem indicating internal deteriorations that
would greatly influence structural integrity and shorten service life. It is
particularly serious when it affects RC deck slabs [1–6]. Thus, crack
detection (the measurement of crack width and density) and inspection
for water leakage are essential aspects of structural health monitoring
(SHM) [7,8]. Crack inspections are often carried out manually by trained
engineers, but this method of monitoring relies on engineer availability,
while it could be inaccurate, time-consuming, and dangerous. As a
consequence, inappropriate repair and strengthening decisions are often
made. Recently, image-recognition technology based on artificial in­
telligence (AI) has come into widespread use for the detection and dis­
tinguishing of cracks in SHM [9–13]. However, it is not easy to assess
surface cracking resulting from repetitive traffic loading and
environmental-related defects [14–20]. Therefore a crucial need for a
straightforward method for the early detection of fatigue failure would
be significant in terms of the maintenance of RC structures, allowing
repair, strengthening, and/or replacement plans to be implemented in
good time [21].
In Japan, more than 50% of the total expenditure for Japanese
highway maintenance goes to the repair and renewal of RC bridge deck
slabs [21]. Deteriorations that lead to surface cracking are caused not
only by high-cycle moving loads but also by material problems such as
salt damage due to the application of de-icing agents and the alkali-silica
reaction (ASR) [22–24]. ASR is the phenomenon of silica minerals pre­
sent in the aggregates reacting with the alkaline pore solution in the
cement to form a hydrophilic gel. The ASR gel swells as it absorbs

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nagai325@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp (K. Nagai).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2021.113050
Received 17 January 2021; Received in revised form 29 July 2021; Accepted 16 August 2021
Available online 27 August 2021
0141-0296/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Adel et al.
moisture, leading to stress and causing cracks in the concrete [25–27]. A
combination of ASR and highly repetitive traffic loading reduces dura­
bility and contributes to worsening deterioration of the top surface of
the deck slabs where the effect of traffic is dominant. Accordingly, there
is a great demand for a rational, quick, and effective method of in-situ
inspection and repair of damaged RC deck slabs to speed up in­
vestigations of countermeasures and reduce costs [28,29].
Image-recognition techniques are currently common and have been
widely discussed in recent research work. They are an appropriate and
rapid method of detecting structural surface cracks and spalling for SHM
[30–32]. However, traditional image recognition is highly sensitive to
noise and is influenced by processing flows and the sophistication of the
classifiers used, leading to difficulties in dealing with low-quality images
and those with complex content [33–35]. Recent developments in AI,
especially innovation in deep learning techniques, open up greater op­
portunities for image-based crack detection and segmentation methods
[9–13]. Among the supervised learning methods that have proven
effective, fully convolutional networks (FCNs) offer strong feature
extraction and generalization capabilities with intensive prediction
without a fully connected layer [36,37]. Ronneberger et al. [38] pro­
posed a u-shaped semantic segmentation network (U-net) based on FCN
that, offers a nice architecture, high-speed training, fewer data volume
requirements, and good performance, leading to its wide use in
biomedical image segmentation. Subsequently, U-Net has been adopted
as the machine learning model for determining the damage associated
with fatigue failure from detected surface cracks [12,13,38].
Although inspection techniques developed on this basis have become
widespread and are useful for roughly judging the current level of
structural damage, they do not offer any basis for fatigue life assessment.
The fatigue damage to RC deck slabs is frequently associated with a
sudden increase in deflection and crack growth from the stable state, but
this rapid transition phase remains unexplored [15,16]. In particular,
when cracking happens as a result of defects related to environmental
effects, it is difficult to identify the cracking resulting only from loading
[28–30]. Hence, in such cases, it is almost impossible to evaluate the
fatigue damage level from the cracking pattern. The ability to detect
signs of fatigue failure at an earlier stage, before the rapid increase in
deflection, would be a valuable tool in implementing accurate mainte­
nance decisions, countermeasures, and assessment of the remaining
service life.
Fatigue damage develops in three-dimensions in an RC deck slab
under high-cycle loading, and it has been observed that the probability
of fatigue failure dramatically increases in the presence of out-of-plane
shear deformation with in-plane opening and closing of cracks
[39–42]. Consequently, the ability to detect such out-of-plane shear
deformation, even though it is complex, before the moment of rapid
deflection increase would be a valuable early indicator of fatigue failure.
In this study, the detection of small delaminations along cracks that arise
from out-of-plane deformation, and hereafter namely as pits, is proposed
as an alternative and indirect detection method. This method is an
innovative concept in which three-dimensional deformations are ob­
tained from two-dimensional images and could prove to be a valuable
tool in fatigue life assessment.
In the presented study, three un-damaged and one ASR-damaged RC
bridge deck slabs with different thicknesses and reinforcement ar­
rangements were tested under moving wheel loading to investigate their
fatigue life and monitor the associated damage. Deflection was
measured and surface cracks were monitored over the fatigue life using
image analysis. Image data were acquired as cracking progressed, with a
portion of this data used as training data for a U-Net AI model developed
to detect the numbers of pits. Accordingly, the evolution of out-of-plane
shear-deformations induced delaminations (pits) was determined and
compared with changes in deck slab deflection and crack density over
the fatigue life. Ultimately, the moment of the rapid increase in pit
density, deflection, and crack density was captured, aiming to confirm
the validity of pits detection as an early damage indicator for fatigue
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Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050
failure.
2. Experimental program
The experimental program consists of subjecting three un-damaged
and one ASR-damaged RC deck slabs to the wheel load moving test. In
the following sections, the material properties, geometry, and rein­
forcement detailing of these RC deck slabs are described, along with the
test set-up. Additionally, the method of monitoring surface cracking by
the acquisition of images and capturing of pit density using the U-Net
implementation of AI is described.
2.1. Test specimens
Table 1 shows the geometry, material, and mechanical properties,
and the pre-loading status of RC deck slabs, comprising the un-damaged
and ASR damaged RC deck slabs. Geometries and reinforcement de­
tailing in both main and transverse directions are shown in Figs. 1 and 2
for the four slab specimens (S-2, S-3, H-1, and S-ASR). These test spec­
imens model an actual bridge deck slab with reinforcement detailing
complying with the Japanese specifications for highway bridges–Part III
of 1964 and 1996 [5]. The mechanical properties including compressive
strength and young’s modulus were tested for the four slab specimens
without introducing any damages, in particular, for specimen S-ASR, as
listed in Table 1. The detailed material test for ASR damage was not done
since this research focuses on structural performance. The test speci­
mens were tested under a moving wheel load aiming to capture their
degradation over the fatigue life in terms of bending deflection and
surface cracking. The test specimens differed according to pre-loaded
damage; the un-damaged RC deck slabs (S-2, S-3, and H-1) were cast
using normal coarse and fine aggregates and there was no initial
cracking, as listed in Table 1. However, the ASR damaged RC deck slab
(S-ASR) was cast using reactive coarse and fine aggregates, and salt
(NaCl) was added to increase alkalinity. Fig. 2(b) shows the initial
damage to the specimen (S-ASR) before the wheel load moving test,
consisting of an ASR-induced cracking pattern on both the bottom and
top surfaces. The top surface had many cracks due to ASR around the
periphery, while on the bottom surface they were concentrated in the
center with a cracking density of 2.96 m/m2. The reason for these
differing cracking patterns is thought to be stresses induced by the self-
weight of the slab during the curing when the specimen was supported at
the four bottom corners. The un-damaged RC deck slab specimens were
designed with a traveling length of 4.5 m and a length normal to the
traveling direction of 2.8 m with a span length (center-to-center of
support) of 2.5 m, as shown in Fig. 1. They consisted of two main types of
slabs with different thicknesses, reinforcement detailing, and material
properties before loading, as shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1. Specimens S-2
and S-3 are 190 mm thick and the main reinforcement bars are 16 mm in
diameter at a spacing of 150 mm. On the other hand, specimen H-1 is
250 mm thick with main reinforcement bars of 19 mm diameter at a
spacing of 150 mm, as shown in Fig. 1. The ASR-damaged RC deck slab
specimen, S-ASR, was designed with a traveling length of 3.0 m and a
length normal to the traveling direction of 2.65 m with a span length of
2.35 m, as shown in Fig. 2(a). This specimen is 160 mm thick with main
reinforcement bars of 16 mm diameter at a spacing of 150 mm, as shown
in Fig. 2.
2.2. Loading setup
Referring to the Japanese specifications for highway bridges–Part III
for T loading [5], the RC deck slab specimens were subjected to loading
with a traveling wheel. Fig. 3(a) shows the moving wheel load test
machine used for testing the un-damaged specimens (S-2, S-3, and H-1).
This is a crank-type machine fitted with steel wheels in which the
rotational motion of a flywheel is converted into reciprocal motion of a
trolley connected by a shaft. The rotational speed of the flywheel has a
M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

Table 1
Properties of RC deck slab specimens.
Specimen Layout (mm) Thickness (mm) Aggregate type Pre-loading status Compressive strength (MPa) Young’s modulus (GPa)

S-2 2800 × 4500 190 normal un-damaged 33.6 26.1

S-3
H-1 2800 × 4500 250 28.7 26.5
S-ASR 2650 × 3000 160 reactive ASR-damaged 43.5 27.1

Fig. 1. Geometry and reinforcement detailing of un-damaged specimens (dimensions in mm): (a) Specimens (S-2 and S-3) ; and (b) Specimen (H-1).

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M. Adel et al.
Fig. 2. ASR-damaged deck slab specimen (S-ASR): (a) Geometry and reinforcing detailing (dimensions in mm); and (b) Cracking pattern due to pre-loaded
ASR damages.
range between 10 and 25 rpm, and the test capacity of the trolley is
1,000 kN in static loading and 400 kN for traveling loading. The load
from the steel wheel was transmitted to the slab specimen via a steel
block with a contact shape in the traveling direction of 200 mm and the
normal direction of 500 mm.
On the other hand, the pre-loaded specimen, S-ASR, with an initial
ASR cracking pattern before loading was tested using a different moving
wheel loading machine, as shown in Fig. 3(b). The different loading
scheme was utilized in this test due to the availability and limitation of
the loading machine and preparation of the ASR damaged slab that took
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Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050
over one year to introduce the ASR cracking. In this case, a steel wheel
was imparted with reciprocating motion over a range of ± 1.0 m while
under loading. The load was transmitted to the test specimen via steel
block measuring 120 mm in the traveling direction and 300 mm normal
to the traveling direction. In all cases, the specimens were placed on
rotational supports through being supported by a rigid girder in the
traveling direction. Besides, the periphery of the specimens was fixed
with bolts to prevent uplifting movement during loading.
Fig. 4 explains the loading history applied to the un-damaged and
ASR-damaged slabs, wherein a constant load of 140 kN was applied to
M. Adel et al.
Fig. 3. The wheel load moving test equipment: (a) Un-damaged specimens (S-2, S-3, and H-1); and (b) ASR damaged specimen (S-ASR).
Fig. 4. Loading history of un-damaged and ASR-damaged specimens during
wheel loading test.
the ASR-damaged specimen (S-ASR) while the load increasing in steps in
the case of the un-damaged specimens, as specified by the Japanese
specifications for highway bridges–Part III [5]. The initial applied load
was 157 kN, and after every 40,000 cycles, it was increased by 19.6 kN.
During the test, the load and number of loading cycles were recorded,
while deflection of the RC deck slab at the mid-span and cracking image
data were obtained after each specific number of cycles. It must be noted
that, as described later, cracking image data was obtained for a certain
portion of the bottom surface of the deck slab. For the other areas of the
slab, the time of crack occurrence and the extension of the cracking
pattern were marked and recorded manually by experimental staff.
2.3. Crack detection methodology
The bottom surface of the un-damaged specimens was painted with
white paint before loading to improve the accuracy of crack recognition,
which relied on processing color information from pixel brightness.
Bottom surface cracking was acquired over the fatigue life using an
image acquisition device fitted with four charged-coupled device (CCD)
cameras, as shown in Fig. 5. Images were collected from near the center
of the tested specimens and image resolution was 1280 × 1024 pixels
using 1:1.8 sensors.
In the case of the ASR-damaged specimen (S-ASR), commercial
mirrorless single-lens reflex cameras of 42.24 megapixel resolution were
used for image acquisition. In this case, given the initial cracking state of
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Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050
Fig. 5. Crack image acquisition device for un-damaged specimens (S-2, S-3,
and H-1).
the surface due to ASR damages, it was not possible to paint with white
paint so the concrete surface was just like that of an actual bridge slab.
These conditions mean that the methods of data acquisition, processing,
and analysis implemented in the case of pre-damaged RC deck slabs
would be applicable to the future image collection of actual bridge deck
slabs. In addition, they would minimize the cost of surface preparation
and maintenance of the real bridge deck slabs without any requirements
of painting for the aim image collection, confirming the applicability of
the proposed method.
Fig. 6 shows the image acquisition range relative to the overall
specimen size: 800 × 800 mm for un-damaged specimens and 1100 ×
1100 mm for the ASR-damaged specimen. One corner of the square
acquisition range was aligned with the center of the tested specimen
taking into account the position of the linear variable differential
transformers (LVDTs) for deflection measurements. Verification tests
confirmed that the crack detection limit was 0.05 mm (crack width). A
software system was developed to obtain the cracking pattern and crack
density from the acquired image data, and also to count the number of
pits. Given that image acquisition in the case of a real in-situ RC bridge
deck slab would likely be in the unloaded condition, this study made use
of image data acquired only when the slab was unloaded by selecting
from the data recorded during loading and unloading of the wheel load
moving test.
M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

Fig. 6. Image acquisition ranges of the tested deck slabs (dimensions in mm): (a) Un-damaged specimens (S-2, S-3, and H-1); and (b) ASR damaged specimen
(S-ASR).

3. U-Net model and the detection of pits

The focus of this study is the pits that form at cracks in RC bridge
deck slabs under moving wheel loading. These pits are caused by tiny
delaminations of the concrete along the length of surface cracks result­
ing from out-of-plane shear deformations.

3.1. Pit definition

The failure mechanism of RC bridge deck slabs has been determined

from previous research under moving wheel loading tests [15,16].
Initial bending cracks, which form under the action of moving wheel
loads, extend into a lattice pattern as shown in Fig. 7(a). As the repeated
application of wheel loading continues, the bending cracks extend into
the upper chord of the deck slab. However, an instantaneous vertical
motion of the bending cracks takes place as the cracks open and close
under the wheel moving loading during the service life of the RC bridge
deck slab, as shown in Fig. 7(b). As a result of this vertical motion, the
crack surfaces rub together until, eventually, the tip of the crack is
forced out in shear failure causing a small concrete fragment and shown
in Fig. 8, a phenomenon defined as a pit.
Pits are the small deteriorations at the crack openings resulting from
the loss of these small concrete fragments with dimensions of several
millimeters caused by shear deformations of cracks, as shown in Fig. 8.
The U-Net AI model developed in this work is designed to extract these
three-dimensional deformations (pits) from the acquired two-
Fig. 8. Schematic diagram pit formation.
dimensional images.
3.2. The U-Net model
As explained above, the machine learning model AI adopted in this
study is the fully convolutional network (FCN). Specifically, the U-Net
architecture proposed for detecting concrete surface cracks and pits is
used, that Ronneberger et al. proposed U-Net as an improvement of FCN
[38]. This method has symmetric contracting and expanding paths and
is known as an encoder-decoder network. In this model, when the
decoder restores the original image from the compressed local

Fig. 7. Crack propagation under moving wheel loading: (a) Initial cracking stage; and (b) Progressive cracking stage.

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M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

Fig. 9. U-Net model structure adopted for machine learning.

Fig. 10. Detection of pits along cracks: (a) The overall image and enlarged portion; and (b) The enlarged portion after AI labeling.

7
M. Adel et al.
characteristics, the positional information of the original image
possessed by the encoder is connected by skip connections.
Fig. 9 illustrates the encoder-decoder and skip connections in the U-
Net model, where the left side of the model corresponds to the encoder
that extracts and compresses the local characteristics from the original
image. However, the right side of the model corresponds to a decoder
that restores the original image from the compressed information,
allowing the convolution layers in the decoder network to output more
precise results. It is based on coarse-to-fine inference methods in which
every pixel in an image is predicted. This technique slacks fully con­
nected layers and proposes a fully convolutional network (FCN),
enabling a classification net to output a classification map with retention
of the location information. Then, skip connections are applied to
combine semantic information from deep, coarse layers with location
information from shallow, fine layers to produce more accurate and
detailed predictions, as indicated by the horizontal gray lines in Fig. 9.
The analysis system in this study employed Python as the program­
ming language and TensorFlow and Keras as the deep learning frame­
works. Since the detection targets in this study are different from those
in the original U-Net, transfer learning was not used for training, and
retraining was performed from scratch. We used 100 epochs of training,
and adopted the relu as the activation function for the middle layer and
the softmax for the output layer. The weight initialization of each layer
was He normal. The Adam was used as the optimizers, and the cross
entropy error was used as the loss function.
Fig. 11. Deflection of RC deck slab specimens under wheel loading: (a) Specimen S-2; (b) Specimen S-3; (c) Specimen H-1; and (d) Specimen S-ASR.
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Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050
3.3. Pits detection with the U-Net model
The detection of pits along cracks using the U-Net model begins with
the preparation of training data from crack images obtained from wheel
load moving tests on the RC bridge deck slab specimens. In this study,
the size of the pit is defined as the spalling part that has a size larger than
1.5 mm along a crack. It is the size that the inspectors at the site can
visually detect to verify the system in the future at the real damaged
structure. The training dataset is prepared by selecting the defined pits
in the images. The image shown in Fig. 10(a) is from test specimen H-1
after 240,000 cycles of wheel loading. In the enlarged image, there are
four visible pits as indicated by the yellow circles that have a size larger
than 1.5 mm and were caused due to the partial spalling along cracks.
Fig. 10(b) shows the labeled positions of the pits at the crack openings as
obtained using the U-Net model as AI. These pits were measured from
the image data and generally were in the size range between 1.5 and 8
mm. For the training data, 1600 images with 224 × 224 pixels were cut
out from the base 16 images. They were extended to 6400 images by
adding flipped and rotated images. Of these, 5120 are for training and
1280 are for verification. The accuracy of the chosen model was 99.76%
on training and 99.65% on verification. The model is developed for the
deck slabs in this study using a limited training data set. To apply the
detection system to various cases including the real deck slab, more data
will be needed to expand the applicability. Furthermore, the effect of the
pit size, defined as 1.5 mm in this study, is not investigated. The
analyzed data in the next section, for example, the number of detected
pits, varies if the defined size is changed.
M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

4. Results and discussion 140 kN, as discussed in Section 2.2. In the bottom surface cracking
pattern at failure, shown in Fig. 12(d), the initial cracks (pre-loading
4.1. Deflection and cracking pattern during fatigue loading cracks) have extended and joined up through penetration and abrasion,
with a crack density of 10.29 m/m2 after 850,000 cycles.
Fig. 11 shows the increasing deflection (loaded and unloaded) of the
four RC deck slab specimens over their fatigue life during the wheel load
4.2. Crack density and number of pits
moving tests. In each case, deflection gradually increases as the loading
progress and then suddenly increases just before failure. Fatigue failure
Figs. 13 and 14 show the pits and crack patterns detected by the U-
of specimen S-2 occurred at 255 kN loading and after 200,975 cycles, as
Net model after certain numbers of cycles for specimens S-2, S-3, and H-
shown in Fig. 11(a). In contrast, fatigue failure of specimen S-3 occurred
1 (Fig. 13), and S-ASR (Fig. 14). It can be seen that the numbers of pits
at 196.2 kN loading and 100,012 cycles, for a fatigue life less than half
detected and the cracking diagrams accurately capture the cracking that
that of S-2 even though the slab has the same configuration, as shown in
was visually observed. Further, almost all pits were successfully detected
Fig. 11(b). The reason of the shorter life is not clear, but it would be
in the case of specimen S-ASR along the cracks that were caused initially
attributed to the difference in detailed loading boundary at the loading
by ASR damages and then propagated under moving loads, even though
and support parts occurred during the experimental setup. It could cause
no surface preparation (painting) had been done. It would validate the
the stress concentration. Or, it would be within the range of normal
proposed method as extensible to actual bridges with less preparation
variability of the fatigue life of the RC deck slab. Fatigue failure of
and maintenance works of the real RC bridge deck slabs. Moreover, the
specimen H-1 occurred at 353 kN loading after a longer fatigue life of
U-Net model was able to adequately capture the increasing number of
432,087 cycles, as shown in Fig. 11(c). This is attributed to the thicker
pits and their locations on the RC deck slabs over the fatigue life.
slab and heavier reinforcement. The bottom surface cracking patterns
In the case of the un-damaged specimens, crack propagation over the
for these un-damaged RC deck slabs (S-2, S-3, and H-1) at failure are
bottom surface proceeded continuously with increasing load cycles and
presented in Fig. 12(a), (b), and (c).
the number of pits increased accordingly, as seen in Fig. 13. On the other
On the other hand, deflection of the ASR-damaged specimen (S-ASR)
hand, specimen S-ASR had an initial ASR-induced cracking pattern from
gradually increases after an initial rapid rise, then at about 600,000
the beginning of loading (as seen at just 10,000 cycles in Fig. 14) and
cycles begins a more rapid rise, relatively at an earlier time before
these cracks slightly continued to propagate. Although pits were
failure, as shown in Fig. 11(d). Fatigue failure occurred after 900,000
detected along some of these cracks, there are other cracks with no pits.
cycles of moving wheel loading at the constant load level of 140 kN.
These cracks probably remained in the opening and closing stage under
Although specimen S-ASR had initial damages due to ASR before
the applied moving load level without forming any pits (out of plane
loading, it experienced a longer fatigue life than the un-damaged spec­
shear deformations), as shown in Fig. 7(a). With increasing loading
imens (S-2, S-3, and H-1) because of the lower applied moving load of
cycles, the number of pits increased, as Fig. 14 makes clear.

Fig. 12. Bottom surface cracking pattern at failure for: (a) Specimen S-2; (b) Specimen S-3; (c) Specimen H-1; and (d) Specimen S-ASR.

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M. Adel et al.
Fig. 13. Detection of cracks and pits using CCD cameras for: (a) Specimen S-2; (b) Specimen S-3; and (c) Specimen H-1.
Fig. 15 plots the experimentally obtained unloaded deflection and
crack density of each specimen over its fatigue life against the density of
the pits. Here, crack density and pit density are defined, respectively, as
the total crack length and the number of pits per unit area of the spec­
imen. The unloaded deflection and crack density of un-damaged speci­
mens (S-2, S-3, and H-1) increases continuously over the fatigue life
(Fig. 15(a), (b), and (c)), but the trend is different for ASR-damaged
specimen (S-ASR). In this case, crack density was initially about 2.96
m/m2 as a result of the ASR damage. Upon application of moving wheel
loading, it instantly increased to about 7.59 m/m2 and then stabilized
with no further propagation over the fatigue life until 850,000 cycles
(Fig. 15(d)).
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Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050
The point at which crack density begins to increase as fatigue failure
approaches is marked by red circles in Fig. 15. It is obvious that
deflection and crack density offer no clear early indicator of imminent
fatigue failure in the case of the un-damaged specimens under moving
wheel loading. And for specimen S-ASR, there is no correlation between
crack density and deflection over the fatigue life, with deflection
beginning to rise toward failure at 600,000 cycles.
In contrast, the plots of pit density in Fig. 15 all exhibit an early
transition phase, as denoted by the red crosses where the increasing rate
of pit density changed dramatically. Specimen S-2 exhibits an increase in
the density of pits at around 120,000 cycles, implying that local shear
deformation begins at this point. It can be considered an early sign of
M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

Fig. 14. Detection of cracks and pits for specimen S-ASR using single-lens reflex cameras.

Fig. 15. Crack density and pit density for deck slab specimens: (a) Specimen S-2; (b) Specimen S-3; (c) Specimen H-1; and (d) Specimen S-ASR.

transition to the failure of the slab. Likewise, specimen S-3 shows a
similar change at around 40,000 cycles. For specimen H-1, the slope of
pit density begins to increase soon after 370,000 cycles, which is earlier
than the 400,000 cycles at which crack density suddenly increases with
deflection. This result confirms the effectiveness of pit detection over
fatigue life as an earlier indicator of failure than crack density.
For the ASR-damaged specimen, the turning point in the density of
pits detected by AI processing represents an early transition phase, with
the red cross appearing at 600,000 cycles, as shown in Fig. 15(d). Nor­
mally, with material level damage caused by ASR, it is difficult to obtain
an early indicator of fatigue failure by evaluating crack density.
Consequently, pit density as an indirect representation of out-of-plane

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M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

shear deformation can be considered an early index of upcoming failure

in the case of damaged RC deck slabs where cracking due to other causes
is also present. Although the pit density shows an increase (bump) after
500,000 load cycles in Fig. 15(d), this sudden increase decreased again
which would be related to the accuracy of detecting pits using the
proposed image processing method. Thus, the turning point in the
increasing rate of the pit density is considered when a continuous in­
crease with a higher rate took place, as shown in Fig. 15(d). This turning
point would be recognized through a periodic inspection of bridges for
the degree of damage evaluation, particularly pit density, to ensure the
signs of the early damages of fatigue failure for RC bridge deck slabs.
Fig. 16 summarizes the changing density of pits detected by AI as
compared to the crack density over the fatigue life for un-damaged and
ASR-damaged specimens. Crack and pit density begins from the first
cycle of wheel loading, except in specimen S-ASR which has initial
cracking damage due to ASR before loading. During the early stages of
loading, cracking and pit density increase together. However, for spec­
imen S-ASR, the pit density only increases during loading without a
notable increase in crack density, as shown by the blue line in Fig. 16. Fig. 16. Crack density and pit density.
Later, after more loading cycles, the pit density begins to increase at a
higher rate than the crack density one for both un-damaged and ASR- size between 1.5 and 8 mm. The model captured the increasing number
damaged specimens. of pits over the fatigue life with an accuracy of 99.76%. The model was
The results confirm that the number of pits, which are resulted from able to determine the number of pits from images obtained using com­
the out-of-plane shear deformations, is an appropriate indicator of mercial single-lens reflex cameras (in the case of the ASR-damaged
damage progression in RC deck slabs. The evolution of the load-bearing specimen) without the need for preparation of the surface by painting.
performance of an RC bridge deck slab can be determined by focusing on The crack and pit density increase under moving wheel loading from
the number of the pits that form along surface cracks, providing a the first cycle, except in specimen S-ASR which has initial cracking
significantly improved means of understanding the remaining fatigue damage due to ASR before loading. Ultimately, for both un-damaged
life until failure than crack density. Although the current research study and ASR-damaged specimens, a significant increase in the density of
was carried out on only three un-damaged and one ASR-damaged RC pits is observed during fatigue loading at an earlier time prior to failure.
deck slab specimens, the results could reveal the validity and applica­ The results in this study make pit density a candidate index for the
bility of the proposed method of image processing using AI in detecting early indication of imminent fatigue failure and the assessment of the
the early damage of fatigue failure. In a future investigation, test results remaining service life of RC deck slab structures, including cases where
on more number of RC deck slab specimens are needed covering a wide initial cracking damage is present. With further investigations on more
range of specimen configurations, reinforcements, loading conditions, RC deck slab specimens, the proposed method offers the potential for
and damages to arrive at more reliable phenomena and conclusions. more efficient and automatable inspections for structural health
monitoring.
5. Conclusions
CRediT authorship contribution statement
This research focused on small delaminations (pits) caused by out-of-
plane shear deformation that are associated with cracking damage in RC Mohamed Adel: Data curation, Formal analysis, Validation, Writing
bridge deck slabs. Un-damaged and ASR-damaged slab specimens of – original draft. Hiroshi Yokoyama: Conceptualization, Methodology.
different thicknesses and reinforcement layouts were subjected to Hitoshi Tatsuta: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology,
moving wheel loading. Deflection was measured over the fatigue life and Software, Validation. Takanori Nomura: Formal analysis, Software,
images of surface cracking were processed by image analysis. The U-Net Validation. Yuki Ando: Investigation, Visualization. Takuro Naka­
machine learning model was used to capture the formation of pits along mura: Investigation, Visualization. Hiroshi Masuya: Investigation,
cracks from the detected images. Points of transition were determined Visualization. Kohei Nagai: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Fund­
during the increase in deflection, crack density, and pit density, aiming ing acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Su­
for assigning an early indicator of fatigue failure. The following con­ pervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing.
clusions are derived:
In the case of un-damaged specimens, unloaded deflection and Declaration of Competing Interest
cracking density gradually increased over the fatigue life under moving
wheel loading and tended to suddenly increase just before failure. Crack The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
density was successfully obtained from the bottom surface of the spec­ interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
imens using image analysis. the work reported in this paper.
In one specimen, initial surface cracking damage due to ASR was
introduced by using reactive aggregates, with an initial crack density of Acknowledgments
2.96 m/m2. When moving wheel loading began, crack density increased
instantly to 7.59 m/m2 and then became stable over the fatigue life. The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Kanazawa
Ultimately, crack density increased to 10.29 m/m2 immediately prior to University and the Civil Engineering Research Institute for Cold Region,
failure, without any correlation with deflection over the fatigue life. Japan in implementing the experimental work on slabs with ASR
Out of plane shear deformations caused small delaminations (pits) damage.
along the cracks before the instant increase in overall deflection of the
RC deck slabs under moving wheel loading, and these could be extracted
from the two-dimensional images of the surface cracks.
The U-Net model was successfully applied to detect pits ranging in

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M. Adel et al. Engineering Structures 246 (2021) 113050

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