Application of infrared thermography for estimating residual stress in ground anchors for maintenance

Characterizing the integrity of ground anchors is essential for examining their usability in the maintenance of soil structure. However, the lift-off test, which is generally used for this purpose, has limitations when applied to covering all installed ground anchors. The objective of this study is to assess the possibility of using infrared thermography to measure the residual stress in ground anchors as a noncontact technique that bypasses the disadvantages associated with existing techniques. A preliminary experiment is performed to determine the exact emissivity of the tested materials. Both passive and active methods, as representative techniques in infrared thermography, are applied. In the large-scale experiment, infrared images of four installed strands with growing stress in the range of 0–400 kPa at 100 kPa intervals are used in the passive method of measurement. For the active method, these same stress ranges are applied to a heated anchor head using a UTM machine. The results of the passive method show that the temperature increased and decreased according to load and unload steps. Values for the cooling rate index are deduced through the active method results, and reliable behavior are observed at 10 and 15 min. The number of pixels with huge temperature changes also changed with the loading step in both passive and active methods. This study demonstrates that infrared thermography is a suitable alternative method for assessing the residual stress in ground anchors as a type of noncontact technique.