Contactless recognition of concrete surface damage from laser scanning and curvature computation

A method conceived for automatic recognition of mass loss of concrete using data acquired by terrestrial laser scanner is presented here. The method is based on computation of mean and Gaussian curvatures of the surface and on piecewise comparison of the corresponding distributions, since these distributions strongly change if an area is affected by damage. This contactless damage recognition system, which could be applied together with other NDT techniques to provide a complete picture of the health of the observed structure, has been successfully applied to a concrete bridge.