Monitoring infrastructure asset through its acoustic signature

Structural health monitoring can benefit transportation infrastructures in terms of pavement management systems and risk management. In this study, a new, non-destructive, acoustic-based method for assessing and monitoring the structural health status (SHS) of road pavements along their operational life is presented. In order to validate the proposed method, an experimental investigation was carried out. The acoustic response of an asphalt concrete road pavement following a proper mechanical excitation (hereafter named acoustic signature) was recorded and analysed. A specifically designed microphone-based electronic system was set up and applied. The acoustic responses were analysed in the time and frequency domain. An integrated system, including the power supply, the abovementioned system, and data transmission equipment was set up and applied as a part of a research project, to collect data and extract features and information valuable to different stakeholders. Experimental results show that the proposed system is able to detect the change of the acoustic signature of the infrastructure asset over time using a small number of meaningful features extracted by clustering techniques. Consequently, it can be used to monitor the SHS of road pavements by detecting the onset of cracks, and keeping under observation their evolution over time.