An Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle for Non-Destructive Testing of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Bridge Decks

The use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite bridge decks is increasing in many civil engineering applications because of its many useful properties. The traditional reinforced concrete bridge decks have steel reinforcing bars embedded in concrete. Because of the use of deicing salt on the bridges to melt snow and ice in winter, the reinforcing bars tend to corrode, thus reducing the life span of the reinforced concrete bridge decks by half (from about 50 yr to about 25 yr). The FRP composite decks are made of noncorrosive material and offer a higher strength-to-weight ratio as compared to the reinforced concrete decks. It is highly important that engineers know how to detect subsurface defects that can form in FRP decks, which may cause serious structural degradation and endanger structural integrity. Both infrared thermography (IRT) and ground penetrating radar (GPR) have shown promise in the field of non-destructive detection of defects. Instead of performing both analysis methods individually, it would be more cost effective for someone to conduct both IRT and GPR at the same time. Research at West Virginia University has produced an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that will acquire data from both GPR and IRT systems to create a combined defect map of the FRP bridge deck to better analyze the results. Thus, the proposed UGV enables rapid data acquisition from the FRP bridge deck in an automated and non-destructive fashion, which minimizes human error. The UGV also incorporates data analysis algorithms, which help in producing a detailed map showing the layout of defects on the bridge deck.