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The detection of cracks is an important monitoring task in civil engineering infrastructure devoted to ensuring durability, structural safety, and integrity. It has been traditionally performed by visual inspection, and the measurement of crack width has been manually obtained with a crack-width comparator gauge (CWCG). Unfortunately, this technique is time-consuming, suffers from subjective judgement, and is error-prone due to the difficulty of ensuring a correct spatial measurement as the CWCG may not be correctly positioned in accordance with the crack orientation. Although algorithms for automatic crack detection have been developed, most of them have specifically focused on solving the segmentation problem through Deep Learning techniques failing to address the underlying problem: crack width evaluation, which is critical for the assessment of civil structures. This paper proposes a novel automated method for surface cracking width measurement based on digital image processing techniques. Our proposal consists of three stages: anisotropic smoothing, segmentation, and stabilized central points by k-means adjustment and allows the characterization of both crack width and curvature-related orientation. The method is validated by assessing the surface cracking of fiber-reinforced earthen construction materials. The preliminary results show that the proposal is robust, efficient, and highly accurate at estimating crack width in digital images. The method effectively discards false cracks and detects real ones as small as 0.15 mm width regardless of the lighting conditions.

The poultry industry, highly prevalent worldwide, generates approximately 7.7 × 10 6 metric tons of chicken feathers (CFs), which become a major environmental challenge due to their disposal when considered waste or due to their energy transformation consumption when considered by-products. CFs are mainly composed of keratin (approximately 90%), which is one of the most important biopolymers whose inherent characteristics make CFs suitable as biopolymer fibers (BPFs). This paper first assesses the morphological and chemical characteristics of these BPFs, through scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and then evaluates the waste valorization of these BPFs as a sustainable alternative for fiber-reinforcement of earthen mixes intended for earthen construction, such as adobe masonry, rammed earth, and earthen plasters. In particular, four earthen mixes with increasing doses of BPFs (i.e., 0%, 0.25%, 0.5%, and 1% of BPFs by weight of soil) were developed to evaluate the impact of BPF-reinforcement on the capillary, mechanical, impact, and abrasion performance of these earthen mixes. The addition of BPFs did not significantly affect the mechanical performance of earthen mixes, and their incorporation had a statistically significant positive effect on the impact performance and abrasion resistance of earthen mixes as the BPF dose increased. On the other hand, the addition of BPFs increased the capillary water absorption rate, possibly due to a detected increment in porosity, which might reduce the durability of water-exposed BPF-reinforced earthen mixes, but a statistically significant increment only occurred when the highest BPF dose was used (1%).

Eight partially grouted (PG-RM) concrete masonry walls were tested to study the influence of the strength and width of blocks, the wall aspect ratio, the horizontal and vertical reinforcement ratio, and the presence of edge elements (flanges). The results were analyzed in terms of the failure mode, damage progression, shear strength, lateral stiffness degradation, equivalent viscous damping ratio, and displacement ductility. Additionally, the performances of some existing shear expressions were analyzed by comparing the measured and predicted lateral load capacity of the tested walls. Based on the results, a slight increment in the lateral stiffness was achieved when employing stronger blocks, while the shear strength remained constant. Besides, increasing the width of concrete blocks did not have a significant effect on the shear strength nor in the initial tangential stiffness, but it generated a softer post-peak strength degradation. Increasing the wall aspect ratio reduced the brittleness of the response and the shear strength. Reducing the amount of vertical reinforcement lowered the resulting shear strength, although it also slowed down the post-peak resistance degradation. Transversal edge elements provided integrity to the wall response, generated softer resistance degradation, and improved the symmetry of the response, but they did not raise the lateral resistance.