Construction and Building Materials 29 (2012) 7–11

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Evaluation of aggregate gradation in lightweight concrete via image processing

F.S. Barbosa a,⇑, M.C.R. Farage a, A.-L. Beaucour b, S. Ortola b
a
Computational Modelling Graduation Program, Department of Computational and Applied Mechanics, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
b
Laboratoire de Mécanique et Matériaux du Génie Civil, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Cergy Pontoise, Cergy-Pointoise, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The present work presents a means of evaluating the particle size distribution of aggregates on hardened
Received 3 May 2011 concretes via an image processing based technique. Such a technique may be employed to the reconsti-
Received in revised form 25 August 2011 tution of hardened concrete composition, which is a matter of interest concerning, specially, lightweight
Accepted 29 August 2011
aggregate concretes. This work presents the results obtained by applying the proposed methodology to
Available online 24 November 2011
synthetic experiments and to pictures taken from lightweight aggregate concrete samples.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Aggregate
Size distribution
Lightweight concrete
Image analysis

1. Introduction broken aggregates causes reduced workability, stiffening the light-

The use of lightweight aggregate concretes allows greater de-
sign flexibility and substantial cost savings, reducing dead load,
allowing slender structural elements, less reinforcing steel and
lower foundation costs [6,10,11]. It is also well known that the
reduction in the concrete density increases the thermal resistance,
leading to a positive impact on the energy consumption of a build-
ing. Low-density lightweight aggregates do improve insulation
properties of the material, but this type of aggregate present low
crushing strength, ranging from 3 to 6 MPa. During the mixing pro-
cess of the concrete such low-density lightweight aggregates may
be damaged. Moreover, lightweight aggregate concretes generally
demand mixing for longer periods than conventional concretes,
in order to assure a properly homogenized mixture. Lightweight
expanded clay and shale aggregates have porous internal struc-
tures surrounded by a smooth relatively dense vitrified shell
[1,7–9]. If the expanded aggregates are broken during the mixing
process, the hardened concrete strength may be affected. Further-
more, the shell of the aggregates is less permeable than the core, so
the water absorption coefficient increases sharply when the aggre-
gates are broken. For broken aggregates, the absorption of water
after the first 30 min of immersion is about 30% higher than that
of the aggregates of the same area [12]. The water penetration into
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Modelagem
Computacional, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora,
Campus Universitário, Bairro Martelos, 36036-330 Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Tel.: +55 32 2102 3424; fax: +55 32 2102 3401.
E-mail address: flavio.barbosa@ufjf.edu.br (F.S. Barbosa).
weight aggregate concrete. The amount of broken aggregates may
be limited if the mixing time is optimized. The analysis of aggre-
gates particle size distribution in hardened concrete may be em-
ployed as a means of analyzing the effect of mixing times on the
aggregates damage. If aggregates are broken during mixing, the
fraction of small aggregates will increase and that of large aggre-
gates will decrease. Besides, the comparison of the adopted grading
curve with that observed on the resulting hardened concrete also
allows analyzing the segregation phenomena due to the aggregates
low density.
This work presents a means of evaluating gradation on hard-
ened concrete samples via an image processing based technique.
Such information may be employed to the reconstitution of this
important aspect of a given concrete composition.
2. Aggregates gradation analysis via image processing
2.1. Numerical experiments applied to synthetic images of concrete
sections
The aim of the presented application is to identify the aggregate
particle size distribution in a given hardened concrete by means of
image processing analysis applied to a picture taken from a plane
section, based on classical thresholding and binarization proce-
dures. This kind of technique is already applied to the experimental
analysis of concrete behavior, for strain measurement [4] and dam-
age evaluation [5], and for the estimation of segregation in con-
crete mixtures [2,3].

0950-0618/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2011.08.081
8 F.S. Barbosa et al. / Construction and Building Materials 29 (2012) 7–11
Fig. 1. Typical aspect of a lightweight aggregate.
The proposed methodology was firstly applied to synthetic
images generated under the assumption that all the aggregate par-
ticles employed on a given concrete sample are spherical, which is
quite reasonable for lightweight aggregates as the ones shown in
Fig. 1. In this case, any plane section taken from that concrete sam-
ple will present only circular aggregate sections with diameters
depending on the cutting plane position. In that way, an aggregate
particle with actual diameter D may appear on a given concrete
plane section with a diameter 0 < d 6 D.
Preliminary numerical experiments consisted of the following
steps:
1. Adoption of referencial gradation curves for a given aggregate,
as the ones shown in Fig. 2.
2. Generating synthetic concrete images similar to those obtained
by sectioning a cylindrical concrete sample containing a pre-
defined volumetric fraction of that given aggregate. An example
of those synthetic concrete sections is shown in Fig. 3, where
each black circular section represents a sectioned spherical
aggregate particle with original diameter D.
3. Identification of the aggregates diameter distribution d on the
synthetic concrete section by image processing.
As stated before, in most of the cases the diameter distribution
on a generated concrete image will not be coincident with the
Fig. 2. Two hypothetical aggregate particle size distributions employed as
reference.
Fig. 3. An example of synthetic section image generated for a concrete comprising
pre-defined aggregate gradation and volumetric fraction.
pre-defined gradation. For illustration purposes, the reference
granulometry distribution shown in Fig. 2 for aggregate #1 was
employed to the generation of 20 synthetic plane sections. Fig. 4
compares the pre-defined curve D to the d distributions identified
via image processing applied to the 20 synthetic images. As
expected, the d curves are not coincident with the pre-defined dis-
tribution D because the diameters of the circular particles present
in the sections depend on the cutting plane.
A statistical representation of the d distribution obtained from
the set of 20 synthetic images (Fig. 4) is given by Fig. 5, which pre-
sents a boxplot where it is possible to identify the dispersion re-
lated to each result. An important question raises from the
observed dispersion: is it possible to correlate the d curve obtained
from a concrete image to the original gradation employed in the
material’s composition?
In order to provide an answer to that question, a number of sim-
ilar numerical experiments were performed on several synthetic
Fig. 4. Comparison between a pre-defined diameter distribution D adopted for a
synthetic concrete sample and 20 diameter distributions d obtained from synthetic
plane sections taken from that sample.
 F.S. Barbosa et al. / Construction and Building Materials 29 (2012) 7–11
Fig. 5. Boxplot related to the statistical representation of d distribution related to
the curves shown in Fig. 4.
images generated from the same pre-defined D distribution, every
image containing a different amount of rocks (black circular sec-
tions). The aim of those experiments was to verify the relation be-
tween the dispersion on the d results and the amount of rocks
present in the analyzed image. To this end, the D distributions gi-
ven in Fig. 2 – named as aggregate #1 and aggregate #2 – were em-
ployed to the obtaining of plane sections which were analyzed via
image processing. The resulting d distributions were graphically
organized, respectively, in Figs. 6 and 7. As one can observe, both
figures consist on boxplots relating the number of rocks present
in the image to the passing % for five diameters (or sieve size, in
mm), identified by different colors. Both the graphics indicate that
d distributions related to the same pre-defined granulometry curve
tend to be invariant as the amount of rocks present in the section
images tends to infinity. As one can see by looking at Figs. 6 and 7,
the greater is the amount of rocks in the image, the smaller is the
dispersion related to the results.
An important conclusion and also the answer to the previously
stated question may be depicted from Figs. 6 and 7: the relation
between D and d distributions tends to be unique as the number
of sectioned rocks present in the analyzed image increases. This
conclusion indicates that by employing synthetic images contain-
ing a significant number of sectioned aggregates, is is possible to
obtain a / coefficient that correlates Di and di, according to the fol-
lowing equation:
Di ¼ /i di
where Di is the actual passing amount of aggregates in sieve size # i
and di is the distribution obtained from image processing of a con-
crete section.
Based on that numerical experiments, it is necessary to create a
database of aggregates with their respective / coefficients, which
Fig. 6. Boxplot of d distribution as a function of the amount of rocks in the synthetic
images obtained from aggregate #1 D distribution (Fig. 2).
9
Fig. 7. Boxplot of d distribution as a function of the amount of rocks in the synthetic
images aggregate #2 D distribution (Fig. 2).
may be accomplished from synthetic images. It is necessary to ob-
tain and store a representative d distribution and the correspon-
dent / coefficient related to a certain kind of aggregate. Then,
given an image taken from a concrete sample (or structure) made
of a known aggregate type with unknown gradation D⁄, the pro-
posed methodology for the reconstitution of that gradation is:
1. Identification of the d⁄ distribution in the concrete section by
image processing.
2. Searching the database of d curves for the one closest to d⁄,
which is given by the dj distribution that minimizes gj,
described by:
N 
X 2
 j
gj ¼ di  di ð2Þ
i¼1
where N is the number of sieves and the superscript j indicates the
jth d distribution in the database.
3. Applying the correspondent /j coefficient to d⁄, in order to
achieve the actual D⁄ curve.
3. Numerical validation of the proposed methodology
In order to validate the proposed procedure, it was generated
herein a database of 120,558 granulometry curves D, distributed
in a region limited by aggregate #1 curve as the upper limit and
aggregate #2 one as the bottom limit (Fig. 2), shown in Fig. 8.
Two different aggregates gradations – denoted as ‘‘aggregate a’’
and ‘‘aggregate b’’ and represented in Fig. 9 – were adopted for val-
idation purposes and applied to the generation of synthetic con-
crete sections, similar to the one presented in Fig. 3. By applying
image processing to those images, the d⁄ distributions for each
ð1Þ concrete was then obtained. Applying Eq. (2), the closest d distri-
bution is determined for each concrete type and the correspondent
/ coefficients are applied in order to reconstitute the actual D
distributions.
Fig. 8. Region of the generated database of D distributions.
10 F.S. Barbosa et al. / Construction and Building Materials 29 (2012) 7–11

Fig. 9. Granulometry distribution for the two concretes used for validation.

Table 1
Passing % for aggregate a.

Sieve size 16 12.5 10 8 6.3 5 4 2.5 1.25 0

(mm)
Original 100 100 96.7 48.5 23.2 8.5 3.8 0.2 0 0
Situation #1 100 100 97.7 58.0 26.4 7.4 4.5 0.3 0.1 0
Situation #2 100 100 95.8 45.7 23.6 8.4 4.0 0.3 0.1 0
Situation #3 100 100 95.9 49.6 24.5 8.4 4.3 0.3 0.1 0
Fig. 10. Specimen #1 and its binary image.

Three different situations were created for each analyzed

concrete:

 situation #1 – synthetic section image was generated with 876

rocks;
 situation #2 – synthetic section image was generated with 7011
rocks;
 situation #3 – synthetic section image was generated with
56,000 rocks.

Tables 1 and 2 summarize the obtained results in terms of pass-

ing % for varying sieve sizes: the gradation related to the original
curves is compared to the ones obtained by image processing of
the three different sections. As expected, the analysis indicate that,
for both concretes, the best results are obtained for situation #3,
although even for situation #1 the identified distributions were
quite similar to the original ones.
4. Application to actual concrete sections

The proposed methodology was applied to two actual concretes

sections obtained from cylindrical samples composed of the same
lightweight aggregate with the following characteristics:

 Specimen #1: obtained from a cylindrical sample made of a

concrete with 25% of aggregates.
 Specimen #2: obtained from a cylindrical sample made of a
concrete with 42.5% of aggregates.
Fig. 11. Specimen #2 and its binary image.
Figs. 10 and 11, respectively, present specimens #1 and #2 and
the correspondent binary images, which present, respectively,
about 7300 and 14,600 rock sections.

Table 2
Passing % for aggregate b.

Sieve size (mm) 16 12.5 10 8 6.3 5 4 2.5 1.25 0

Original 100 100 99.4 80.1 40.8 15.4 7.3 0.3 0 0
Situation #1 100 100 99.8 84.3 41.3 15.3 7.1 0.3 0.1 0
Situation #2 100 100 99.5 80.0 40.4 15.6 6.9 0.4 0.2 0
Situation #3 100 100 99.5 80.3 40.2 15.6 6.8 0.3 0.2 0
 F.S. Barbosa et al. / Construction and Building Materials 29 (2012) 7–11
Fig. 12. Region of the database created for the application example.
Fig. 13. Comparison between the actual D distribution employed to the concrete
samples and the two d distributions obtained from specimen #1 and specimen #2.
For this application a database of 103,467 synthetic specimens
was created from synthetic images with granulometry distribu-
tions comprised in the assigned region presented in Fig. 12.
As actual rocks are not exactly spherical, the determination of d
distributions demand an extra procedure: for each identified rock
region in the picture, a circle with the same area was considered,
and the diameter of this circle was linked to the rock diameter.
The proposed methodology (plus the extra step) was applied to
the two concrete sections, resulting in the estimated curves plotted
in Fig. 13, in comparison with the actual gradation curve. The com-
parison indicates that the estimated curves are quite close to the
actual D distribution. Moreover, estimation #2 is more precise than
#1, as expected, due to the fact that specimen #1 presents more
aggregate sections than specimen #2.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents a methodology for the evaluation of the
granulometry distribution of aggregates on hardened concretes
11
via an image processing analysis based on well known threshold-
ing and binarization procedures.
Preliminary numerical experiments indicate the existence of a
correlation between the particle size distribution d obtained from
a plane section taken from a concrete sample and the actual grada-
tion D employed in the material’s composition.
The proposed technique was applied to actual concrete sections,
and the results were promising, since the obtained curves were
quite close to the actual distribution.
Results indicate that the proposed technique consists of a low-
cost and effective means of evaluating aggregates gradation from
concrete samples. The concrete sections to be analyzed may be ob-
tained via conventional carroting or sewing procedures, while the
images may be taken with the help of an ordinary digital photo
camera – there is no need of sophisticated or expensive equip-
ments to achieve good results.
In real situations, this methodology may be useful as a means of
identifying excessive aggregates crushing in lightweight aggregate
concretes due to mixing and also for expertise, in order to reconsti-
tute the composition of a given material, for restauration purposes
as an example.
Moreover, the application presented in this work proves that
there is no need of an extensive database of actual aggregates dis-
tribution for practical purposes – a numerical synthetic database
may be employed instead, without loss of quality.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge CAPES (Coordenação de
Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), CNPq (Conselho
Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil),
FAPEMIG (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Ger-
ais, Brazil) and Conseil Régional de l’Ile-de-France for the financial
support.
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