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Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 785 – 789

The 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering

Fatigue crack detection system based on IoT and statistical analysis

Shigeru Yasudaa*, Shinya Miyazakia
a
IHI Corporation, 1 Shin-Nakahara Cho, Isogo-ku, Yokohama 2358501, Japan

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +80-45-759-2864; fax: +81-45-759-2352. E-mail address: shigeru_yasuda@ihi.co.jp

Abstract

A new fatigue crack detection system was developed utilizing IoT and statistical analysis techniques. Strain distributions on structural
members are statistically compared between health and diagnosis conditions. It was designed to detect fatigue crack initiations and
propagations as abnormal. Data acquisition transfer system and automatic fatigue crack detection system were built using IoT techniques and
cloud server platform. Users can see the detection results with real time chart application software in their office on demand. Two examples of
demonstration experiments are shown with their data and analysis results. Fatigue crack was detected in one of the experiments in realistic
working conditions. Robust crack detection method and IoT remote monitoring system were developed, and verified possessing high detection
accuracy on realistic machinery.
©©2017
2017TheTheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published B.V. This
by Elsevier is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
B.V.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
Keywords: Structural integrity; Strain measurement; Wireless sensor network; Remote monitoring; Strain redistribution

1. Introduction causes concern about increasing inspection costs. For the

Social infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels, and
industrial infrastructures such as chemical/storage plants and
cargo handling machines are giving rise to social problems. A
reduction in strength along with aging may cause fatigue
failures which can give rise to large-scale accidents; resulting
in injury or death, and also economic losses.
Specific examples of fatigue failure of bridges include the
cases of “Honjo Ohashi,” Akita prefecture (built 41 years ago),
and “Kisogawa Ohashi,” Mie prefecture (built 44 years ago),
where corrosion had caused fatigue fractures in structural
members[1]. In both of these cases the fractures were found
by inspection and fixed, but if they had been overlooked, a
large-scale collapse would have occurred.
It is possible to prevent aged bridges from collapsing on a
large scale by performing regular inspections and maintenance.
However, in Japan, there are 157 thousand road bridges with a
length of at least 15 m, and more than half of them will exceed
50 years of age by 2030. To prevent collapse of bridges due to
rapidly progressing degradation, it is necessary to perform
inspection more minutely and frequently. However, this
reason, practical low-cost inspection techniques are desirable.
The industrial infrastructures also include facilities that
were manufactured 50 years ago during the high economic
growth period of Japan, and their aging is becoming a serious
problem. Further, along with the globalization of industrial
activities, domestic facilities have been reduced, and an
unexpected stop of operations due to limited facilities
significantly impacts company’s production activities. In order
to stably operate aged facilities in such circumstances, the
demand of preventive maintenance techniques is rising.
To reduce inspection costs and realize preventive
maintenance which are socially demanded, monitoring
techniques using sensors to constantly monitor various states
are effective, and are being widely developed in the world[2-
4].
In order to practically use the monitoring techniques for the
reduction in inspection and preventive maintenance costs, it is
important to establish a high accuracy diagnosis technique
which is capable of automatically sensing and analyzing
abnormalities without the need of manual operation.

2212-8271 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2016.11.260
786 Shigeru Yasuda and Shinya Miyazaki / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 785 – 789

The automatic diagnosis technique used in monitoring aged

infrastructure is seen as a medium-to-long-term technical
development target from a political aspect as well. The
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is setting a
goal of realizing “Verification of multi-sensor maintenance
systems for social infrastructure” by 2018 after establishing a
low-cost data acquisition technique (ICT Strategic Meeting).
Also, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has
launched a development project towards establishing “Data
analysis technique for presuming time interval of repair” by
2020 (Strategic Market Creation Plan). They will be
developed using the technical strengths of the private sector.
Since the private and public sectors are collaboratively (a) Conventional abnormal detection with threshold value
pursuing the technical development, a number of
demonstration experiments will be performed around 2020 to
put the technique into commercial use. Our group is currently
developing the “SI-F method-based fatigue crack degradation
sensing technique” in order to establish a unique monitoring
capability for maintaining structural health at low cost.

2. Abnormal detection techniques

For practical use, a new abnormal detection technique was

developed. Firstly, conventional abnormal detection technique
and its problem are mentioned. Secondly, a new abnormal
detection technique “SI-F” is introduced as an effective (b) New abnormal detection noticing relationships between sensor data
technique to resolve the above problem. Fig. 1. Outline of abnormal detection techniques.

2.1. Conventional abnormal detection techniques
Conventional abnormal detection techniques with sensing
are mainly based on a method that compares individual sensor
data with a threshold value. This method often makes an
erroneous diagnosis because sensor data tend to exceed a
threshold value due to disturbances (variation in temperature,
variation in load, etc.) as shown in Fig.1(a). Furthermore,
setting a threshold value larger to prevent the erroneous
diagnosis may reduce sensing accuracy, potentially masking
the occurrence of true abnormalities.
To prevent this problem, it is effective to focus on the
proportional relationship among multiple pieces of sensor data,
and determine the occurrence of abnormalities from a change
in their relationships as shown in Fig.1(b). The relationships
among the multiple pieces of sensor data are unlikely to be
affected by disturbances such as a change in temperature or a
change in load, and consequently prevent both erroneous
diagnosis, and increases accuracy.
2.2. SI-F abnormal detection technique
Structural Integrity F-test, “SI-F”, is a statistical method
proposed by the Todoroki Laboratory of Tokyo Institute of
Technology [5,6], and a technique for sensing the occurrence
of abnormalities.
The SI-F method determines whether or not a proportional
relationship at the time of diagnosis can be regarded as the
same as a proportional relationship at the normal time. In the
event they cannot be regarded as the same, it can diagnose the
cause of the abnormality. An F-test, a statistical approach for
testing the equivalency between two sets of data, is used to
determine this. A calculated F-value is unlikely to be affected
by disturbances, and gives a single numerical value which
increases if the degree of abnormality becomes higher. As a
result, an automatic diagnosis can be performed with a
threshold value set for the F-value.
The SI-F method is a technique to sense the occurrence of
various abnormalities. This article introduces a technique for
noticing abnormality of strain distributions to sense fatigue
degradation (crack occurrence/crack growth) with high
accuracy. Note that in the following, the “fatigue degradation
sensing technique based on the SI-F method” is referred to as
an “SI-F method.”
3. Establish and verification of SI-F method
Finite element analysis, FEA, and experiments are
performed to establish and verify the SI-F method. In this
chapter, those numerical simulations and fatigue tests are
described, especially about crack occurrence detection.
3.1. Finite element analyses of crack occurrence
Some sets of FEA of welding structure units with/without
crack were performed. Strain redistributions caused by crack
occurrences are obtained from the analysis. Some types of the
welding structure units are selected from several guidelines of
steel welding [7,8]. An example of the welding structure unit
is shown in Fig.2 with a schematic of realistic structural
member.
 Shigeru Yasuda and Shinya Miyazaki / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 785 – 789
Fig. 2. Steel structural member and welding unit.
a Loading
General view Enlarged view
b
Loading
General view Enlarged view
Fig. 3. Results of FEA (a)without/(b)with 20mm crack.
FEA models of the welding structure units composed of
shell elements were prepared. The degree of brightness
represents strain distributions. The regions with brighter color
represent those with higher strain. Changes of strain
distributions caused by crack occurrence are obtained by
comparing with results of healthy (without crack) model and
cracked model. The length of crack was set to 20mm. It was
shorter than cracks detectable by visual inspections.
Calculation results of the FEA are shown in Fig. 3. Highest
strain region in Fig. 3 appears around the crack tip.
787
3.2. Fatigue test of a welding structure unit
A mock fatigue test was performed to verify the strain
redistribution in the specimen caused by crack occurrence.
The specimen for fatigue test was designed to simulate
welding structure unit mentioned in previous section. Loading
a
b
Welding Loading
Fig. 4. Outline of mock fatigue test (a) photograph; (b) simplified schematic.
Crack detection by visual inspection
Fig. 5. Fatigue crack detection (a) photograph; (b) SI-F analysis result.
was programed as sinusoidal variation wave; it also simulates
the realistic loading. Outline of fatigue test is shown in Fig.4
with a picture and simplified schematic.
A fatigue crack, 20mm-length 3mm-depth, shown in Fig. 5
was detected by visual inspection after about 45,000 cycles.
SI-F method showed increasing of abnormality from 35,000
cycles. This means that crack detection ability of SI-F method
is better than visual inspection.
4. Demonstration tests on sites
4.1. Civil engineering machinery
A steel truss structure of civil engineering machinery was
chosen as an object of demonstration test. Some sets of strain
sensors were deployed for diagnose locations. One of the
diagnose locations are shown in Fig.6 (a) as outline. Weldable
788 Shigeru Yasuda and Shinya Miyazaki / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 785 – 789
strain sensor were selected because its durability for long term
outdoor measurement. An enlarged photograph is shown in
Fig.6 (b). Strain data were recorded for about two weeks by
usual wired measurement system.
a b
Strain sensors
Fig. 6. One of diagnose locations (a) Outline; (b) Enlarge of sensors.
Fatigue crack
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Fig. 7. SI-F method analysis result with a crack photograph at “E”.
Strain data were processed with SI-F method analysis. SI-
F method analysis results are shown in Fig. 7 in time series.
Analysis results called “F-value” represent abnormality of
each diagnosis location. F-value is a random variable that has
an F distribution. Large F-value means strong abnormality in
this method. F-value of location “E” in Fig.7 increased after
10 days. A crack was identified near the measurement
location by visual inspection. This demonstration test shows
by means of evidence that the SI-F method is valid for fatigue
crack detection on realistic machinery in use.
4.2. Remote monitoring system of jib crane
SI-F method analysis was installed on a jib crane shown in
Fig.8. Six locations in the crane are chosen for diagnosis. An
original data transfer and automatic diagnosis system was
developed to implement real time structural integrity
monitoring in low cost and labor saving. It is composed of
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), 3G communication from
site to a cloud server, automatic SI-F method analysis
function, and real time chart program. The system was
designed based on IoT technique. Measurement, transfer of
data, and analysis are all performed automatically.
Wireless sensor network is composed of strain sensor
nodes and a gateway. Nodes measure and temporary store
strain data for programed period, like one hour. After the
measurement, nodes send the strain data to the gateway
sequentially by 2.4GHz band radio communication. The
nodes can work by solar photovoltaic generation in the case of
one hour measurement a day. Two sets of Nodes-Gateway
WSN in this demonstration test, namely top and bottom of the
crane as shown in Fig.8.
Gateways gather strain data into one data file. Gateway
uploads the data file immediately to a cloud server using 3G
communication with secure protocol. Operation data are also
uploaded from the crane system to the cloud server by another
3G communication. The strain data file and operation data file
are merged into one file automatically in the cloud server.
Authorized person, ex) owner and maintenance staff, can
observe the raw data as a real time chart shown in Fig.9 (a) by
access the cloud server using dedicated software program.
The data file is automatically analyzed according to SI-F
method. Analyses results for six locations are also observed
like Fig.9 (b) by access the cloud server using the dedicated
program. This program achieves a significant cost reduction
because maintenance staff can observe machine conditions
without visiting the sites. Raw data and SI-F analyzed data
are copied to another back up server.
Nodes
Store & SI-F analysis
Raw data
Analyzed data
Gateway
Gateway
Back up
Authorized person
Fig. 8. Remote monitoring system based on IoT and SI-F method.
a b
           
Fig. 9. Real time chart (a) raw data, (b) SI-F.
5. Summary
Robust crack detection method and IoT remote monitoring
system were developed and test in laboratory and at sites.
The following conclusions are drawn:
 Shigeru Yasuda and Shinya Miyazaki / Procedia CIRP 61 (2017) 785 – 789
x SI-F crack detection method was developed using the
strain redistribution with crack. The strain redistribution
was calculated by FEA. This method verified possessing
higher sensitivity than visual inspections in laboratory and
on realistic machinery.
x IoT structural integrity monitoring system was developed
and deployed at a jib crane. Automatic diagnosis and data
transfer worked effectively.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Maritime and Port
Authority of Singapore, Sembcorp Marine Ltd. and Agency
for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore
(A*STAR).
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