The Use of Lasers for Pavement Crack Detection

This research was initiated to investigate the capability of using lasers for crack detection in pavements. If such a capability could be developed it would be used to aid in obtaining and evaluating pavement distress and cracking information for the State's P.E.S. procedures, used for maintaining and evaluating pavements. The research effort has involved three stages. The first two stages were to determine the crack detection capabilities of the laser probes, used on the Surface Dynamics Profilometer (SOP). The SOP is owned by the State and used for road profile measurements. After experiments indicated that these probes could be used for such detection, a system was developed to further study this capability and to determine how it could be used to implement an automated high speed crack identification system. The third stage is the implementation of such a system so it's usefulness for P.E.S. data collection activities can be determined. This research report describes the first two phases of the research effort.