Damage imaging of reinforced concrete structures using electromagnetic migration algorithm

Reconstructing damage geometry with computationally efficient algorithms is of primary importance in establishing a robust structural health monitoring system (SHMS). In this paper electromagnetic migration, a linearized imaging algorithm, is adopted to image the damages in reinforced concrete structures. This algorithm is formulated in time-domain for 3-D inhomogeneous isotropic and lossy structures. In order to reduce the computational cost and to examine the damage resolution of this imaging algorithm, different imaging conditions are introduced. Numerical simulations in 2-D transverse magnetic (TM) wave for a reinforced concrete slab with multiple damages are performed to test the effectiveness of the algorithm. All synthetic sensor data, incident field, and migration field are computed via a finite difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It is concluded that the proposed imaging algorithm is capable of efficiently identifying the damages geometries, is robust against measurement noise, and may be employed in a SHMS.