Analysis of micro-structural damage evolution of concrete through coupled X-ray computed tomography and gray-level co-occurrence matrices method

Abstract Concrete CT test is an effective method used to analyze micro-structural damage evolution of concrete under loading condition. In the CT images of different stress states in the same section, gray value changes in the original number matrix of CT image are the key to investigate microscopic damage evolution of concrete. However, the slight changes in the gray value of CT images before peak stress cannot be intuitively observed with the naked eye. This study mainly aims to develop a coupled method based on statistical method and X-ray CT to extract indicators of such subtle changes. Different cross-sectional CT images of concrete at different stress stages were obtained by uniaxial static compression CT test. The theory of the grey level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) was then adopted to analyze micro-damage evolution and crack properties. That is, the GLCM of the CT images were calculated, and four statistical features including contrast, energy, correlation, and homogeneity were extracted, which can be extended into quantitative analysis of micro-damage hidden in the CT images of concrete. Results exhibited that the damage growth area, concentrating between the 45th and 225th concrete cross-section, could be predicted by the distribution of four statistical features (i.e., contrast, energy, correlation and homogeneity) at the fourth scan, and it is consistent with the crack location in the fifth scan. The contrast, energy and homogeneity follow the Gaussian distribution under five scan stages, and the correlation follows the Laplace distribution. In addition, the changes of bandwidth in color heat map illustrating the GLCM before and after specimen failure show that the bandwidth is positively correlated with micro-structural damage of concrete specimen.