Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assisted Crack Detection for Wonjudaegyo Bridge in Korea

Since the 1970s, Korea has achieved exponential economic growth over a short period of time with huge number of infrastructures built. However, 30 years past these infrastructures are now deteriorating at rapid pace due to extensive use and climatic factors, raising safety issue in recent years. The current task force face limitations in monitoring and maintenance due to various reasons: insufficient budget, increasing number of infrastructure facilities requiring maintenance, shortage of manpower, and rapidly increasing number of aging infrastructure facilities. To overcome these limitations, a new approach is required that is different from manual inspection methods under the existing rules and regulations. In such context, this study aimed to explore the efficiency of bridge inspection for cracks by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that could observe inaccessible areas, could be conveniently and easily controlled, and could offer high economic benefits. A case study of UAV based crack detection of for high bridge in Wonjudaegyo Bridge, Korea was done. The result shows effective crack detection on the structure than traditional methods.