Opportunities and challenges in concrete with thermal imaging

This article describes some uses of infrared thermal imagery for monitoring fresh and recently-cast concrete. The authors monitored concrete batching facilities and a construction site with an infrared scanner and field observations from this study are discussed. The findings suggest that infrared imagery is appropriate for many applications in monitoring materials and equipment, from batch plant to curing. In many applications, the exact temperature is less important than observing the pattern of temperature variation and then associating a specific pattern with some concrete or equipment behavior. However, accuracy and precision are essential in other applications, such as checking for compliance with a concrete temperature specification. Infrared systems are also shown to deliver quantitative reliability, but only when several key parameters, including the emissivity of the observed surface, are determined.