794 PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 2023, 2011

Radar-based Quantification of Corrosion Damage in Concrete

Structures
Ahmad Zaki1 and Shahid Kabir2
1
School of Civil Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
2
Sustainable Materials and Infrastructure (SMI) Cluster
Collaborative -Electronic Design Excellence Centre (CEDEC), Engineering Campus
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract The ground penetrating radar (GPR) methods has been found to be useful in
evaluating the corrosion damage in the concrete structures. However, the GPR image is very
difficult to be interpreted because it requires processing technique. This paper studies the GPR
to detect the corrosion of concrete structure using image processing technique. The reinforced of
concrete slabs are corroded as results of impressed current method to accelerated the corrosion.
The GPR are used for detection the corrosion damage in the concrete slabs. The GPR data
showed that the corrosion can be detected, however need to analyzed and interpretation by
using image processing and discriminant analysis. Image processing technique is applied for
quantification of corrosion data while discriminant analysis is applied to classify the data.

1. INTRODUCTION
Many reports had highlighted the seriousness of the corroded infrastructure problem all over the
world. The cost to rehabilitate existing deteriorated infrastructure worldwide reached billion of
dollars [1]. An urgent need for the advances of effective inspection method had been denoted out to
detect corrosion of the concrete structures. Non-destructive testing (NDT), an objective corrosion
inspection method could lead to cost savings of billions of dollars worldwide by the detection of
corroded reinforcement in concrete at an early stage, before the functionality of a structure is
seriously damaged [2]. The NDT of ground penetrating radar (GPR) method had been found to
be useful in evaluating existing reinforced concrete structures for continued use or reparation [35].
The GPR was becoming more and more popular as a concrete inspection method. The GPR
was significant technology for locating embedded targets in concrete structures. The NDT method
of GPR had allowed a reliable and efficient inspection of the structural integrity of reinforced
concrete [6]. However, the results of GPR image was very difficult to interpret. It may require
the skills of an experienced operator and the use of lengthy manual post-processing and subjective
expertise to produce a reliable end result [68]. Recent years, many automatic techniques had been
developed for interpreting the GPR data. Study done by [9] had developed system based on a neural
network classifier. Image processing techniques are employed to provide a high resolution image
and good interpretation of data image of the GPR. The systems consist of a pattern recognition
stage with additional pre-processing technique and feature-extraction stage to obtain input fed into
neural network.
In addition, Al-Nuaimy et al. [10] had developed guidelines and recommendations for GPR data
acquisition and interpretation. Image processing techniques were employed to provide a high res-
olution image, an accurate depth and location information, and to facilitate straightforward data
interpretation. However, the success had so far been limited to straightforward cases such as
buried object location [9, 11]. Therefore, in this paper, authors investigate the corrosion in rein-
forced concrete structures by proposing the use of image processing techniques to extract features
differentiating corrosion and no corrosion of reinforced concrete structures from the GPR data and
to obtain the best interpretation for corrosion detection. In addition, for the further process the
use of discriminant analysis for decision of the data whether corrosion or no corrosion is applied.
2. SAMPLE PREPARATION AND DATA ACQUISITION
In this paper, the reinforced concrete slabs with dimension l = 1 m, w = 1 m, and h = 0.3 m was
prepared. The concrete grade is C30. Portland cement, uncrushed sand, crushed limestone with
a maximum aggregate size of 20 mm were used to prepare the concrete mixes. A water-cement
(W/C) ratio of 0.5 were kept in-variant in all concrete mixes. The y-type reinforced bars (rebars)
with length approximately 1 m were selected with diameter 20 mm. The rebars was immersed in a
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 2023, 2011 795

(a) GPR data (b) K-means clustering (c) binary image (d) boundary image
Figure 1: Image processing data.

(a) (b)
Figure 2: Segmented images, (a) no corrosion segment, (b) corrosion segment.

solution of 5% NaCl (0 day for no corrosion, 1 day for low corrosion, 3 days for middle corrosion,
and 7 days for high corrosion) using direct current (DC) power supply. The direction of current
was adjusted so that the corroding rebars was served as the anode, while rebar facing the corroding
rebars was served as the cathode. The current of 10 V (volt) and 1 A (ampere) were applied in
the corrosion process. In the last process, the corroded rebars are induced to concrete mixes. The
2 GHz of GPR manufactured by IDS (Ingegneria Dei Sistemi S.p.A) Italy, was used to detect the
corrosion in reinforced concrete slabs after 28-days of standars moist curing. The result could be
proposed in a-scan, b-scan, c-scan, and 3D image. In this paper authors used 3D image as the GPR
data for corrosion detection.

3. IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

Imaging of concrete structures had presented many challenges due to the fact that concrete was a
non-homogeneous material [12]. In this paper, authors used k-means clustering and edge detection
image processing techniques to detect and to investigate corrosion and non corrosion image from
GPR data of concrete structures.
3.1. K-means Clustering
K-means clustering technique divided a digital image into multiple segments. The image segmenta-
tion results could be used to derive region-wide color and texture features, which in turn, together
with the segment location, boundary shape, and region size, can be used to extract semantic infor-
mation [13]. To simplify the representation of an image into something that was more meaningful
and easier to analyze was the direction of this technique. For example, we needed object in one
color in colourfull image, so the segmentation would present image with one color only separately.
Each of the pixels in a region were similar with respect to some color characteristics [14]. In this
work, as preprocessing image of color based segmentation using k-means clustering was applied
using matlab 7. The data given by GPR was clustered by the k-means method, which aims to
partition the points into k groups of color images.
3.2. Binary and Boundary Image
For analysis, the used cluster image were converted to binary image using matlab 7 toolbox for
calculation of area of object, i.e., corossion and no corossion or sum of white pixels in corossion
and no corossion images. In addition for further analysis this work also applied perimeter toolbox
in matlab 7 for calculation boundary pixel analysis. The original image of GPR data, k-means
clustering image, binary image, and boundary image gained using matlab 7 simulation were shown
796 PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 2023, 2011

Bo xplot of Background pixels by status Bo xplot of Area pixels by status

15000
22000

20000
12500
Background pixels

18000

Area pixels
0000 16000

14000
7500
12000

5000 10000
corrosion no corrosion
corrosion status no corrosion status

(a) (b)

Bo xplot of Boundary pixels by status

6000
Boundary pixels

5500

5000

4500

4000
corrosion no corrosion
status
(c)
Figure 3: The capability of three features for differentiating corrosion and no corrosion.
Table 1: Classification for three features.
Features Corrosion No corrosion P
Background 9307 956 13545 527 0.00
Area 16252 1515 20818 531 0.00
Boundary 5757, 9 241, 4 5713, 5 87, 7 0.29
*P value < 0.05 for capable features

in Figure 1.

4. DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS
In this work, discriminant analysis (DA) was used to determine the important of image features
for GPR data classification. The DA was a very popular supervised learning technique. DA
was fast, easy to implement and readily available in statistical packages. In this paper, we used
minitab version 14.12 statistical software for classification process. The first process was to show
the applicability of the used features using one-way anova statistical operation. If the features had
P value < 0.05, so the feature was compatible features. According to [15], DA was a classification
method that can predict group membership of a newly sample observation. Three features, i.e.,
sum of background pixels, area of object, and boundary pixels as input into DA were obtained from
processed images which segmented images were taken no corrosion and corrosion separately with
size 100 200 pixels as shown in Figure 2.

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Total 143 data images was divided to corrosion 108 and no corrosion 35. Table 1 was tabulated for
proving the capability of the three features.
In addition, the capability of three features for differentiating corrosion and no corrosion was
shown clearly in Table 1. The background and area were capable to differentiate corrosion and no
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 2023, 2011 797

Table 2: Classification using linear discriminant analysis.

Put into Group corrosion no corrosion

corrosion 108 0
no corrosion 0 35
Total N 108 35
N correct 108 35
Accuracy 100%

corrosion significantly proved with P value 0.00. The capable features was then processed using
DA to show the accuracy of classification. Linear discriminant analysis was used for process. The
result for linear DA was shown in Table 2.
Based on Table 2 the classification of corrosion and no corrosion was proved excellent result
100%. According to the result, we analyzed that these data were not complicated data due to high
accuracy performance of DA classification. Most probably, these results were influenced by effective
image processing technique for segmentation the object of interest and other object in images.
6. CONCLUSION
This paper presented the observation of GPR data with two conditions of concrete structures.
Image processing techniques were used to process the image data to obtain features to classify the
image into two classes using linear discriminant analysis. The accuracy results presented in Table 2
had proven image processing to be effective for detecting the corrosion and no corrosion in concrete
structures using GPR data. The use of discriminant analysis for classification our data had been
proved excellent due to not complicated data. The authors of this paper believe that the used
techniques could be used to classify the other damage images.
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