Technology

The research objectives of this project are the maintenance of transportation infrastructure: i) to develop and improve the reference-free crack measurement (RACM) hardware system for field applications, ii) to develop a post-processing diagnostic framework, iii) to develop monitoring system based on internet of things. In the research category, the reference-free crack measurement system is an innovative technique to improve system efficiency and better maintenance of existing infrastructure.

Annually, transportation agencies spend several millions of dollars of expenditures for their rehabilitation works due to the problematic soils underneath the infrastructure assets. The soils in Dallas-Fort Worth region have high tendency to undergo swell-shrink behavior that contributes to the premature failure of pavements. The proposed research focused on conducting the laboratory tests on the field collected samples and validating their field performance using innovative data collection technologies.