
ENHANCED REBAR DIAMETER CLASSIFICATION IN CONCRETE ELEMENTS VIA FUSED GROUND PENETRATING RADAR AND DEEP LEARNING
Abstract
This study presents a novel approach for accurately classifying rebar diameters in reinforced concrete elements by integrating ground penetrating radar (GPR) data with advanced deep learning techniques. Traditional GPR-based rebar detection often faces limitations in resolution and noise, especially in complex or dense reinforcement scenarios. To address these challenges, this research employs data fusion strategies and a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to enhance the interpretability and precision of GPR signals. Experimental validation on concrete samples with varying rebar diameters demonstrates significant improvements in classification accuracy compared to conventional methods. The proposed framework offers a non-destructive, efficient, and scalable solution for structural health monitoring and assessment in civil engineering applications.
Keywords
Rebar classification, ground penetrating radar (GPR), deep learning
References
Taheri, S. (2019). A review on five key sensors for monitoring of concrete structures. Construction and Building Materials, 204, 492–509.
Zhou, F., Chen, Z., Liu, H., Cui, J., Spencer, B. F., & Fang, G. (2018). Simultaneous estimation of rebar diameter and cover thickness by a GPR-EMI dual sensor. Sensors, 18(9), 2969.
Rabczuk, T., & Belytschko, T. (2004). Cracking particles: A simplified meshfree method for arbitrary evolving cracks. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 61(13), 2316–2343.
Goswami, S., Anitescu, C., Chakraborty, S., & Rabczuk, T. (2020). Transfer learning enhanced physics informed neural network for phase-field modeling of fracture. Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics, 106, 102447.
Rabczuk, T., & Belytschko, T. (2007). A three-dimensional large deformation meshfree method for arbitrary evolving cracks. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 196(29–30), 2777–2799.
Rabczuk, T., Zi, G., Bordas, S., & Nguyen-Xuan, H. (2010). A simple and robust three-dimensional cracking-particle method without enrichment. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 199(37–40), 2437–2455.
Tosti, F., & Ferrante, C. (2020). Using ground penetrating radar methods to investigate reinforced concrete structures. Surveys in Geophysics, 41(3), 485–530.
Liu, H., Lin, C., Cui, J., Fan, L., Xie, X., & Spencer, B. F. (2020). Detection and localization of rebar in concrete by deep learning using ground penetrating radar. Automation in Construction, 118, 103279.
Oikonomopoulou, E. C., Palieraki, V. A., Sfikas, I. P., & Trezos, C. G. (2022). Reliability and limitations of GPR for identifying objects embedded in concrete—Experience from the lab. Case Studies in Construction Materials, 16, e00898.
Dou, Q., Wei, L., Magee, D. R., & Cohn, A. G. (2017). Real-time hyperbola recognition and fitting in GPR data. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 55(1), 51–62.
Küçükdemirci, M., & Sarris, A. (2022). GPR data processing and interpretation based on artificial intelligence approaches: Future perspectives for archaeological prospection. Remote Sensing, 14(14), 3377.
Liu, G., Gao, W., Liu, W., Chen, Y., Wang, T., Xie, Y., et al. (2024). Automatic defect classification for infrared thermography in CFRP based on deep learning dense convolutional neural network. Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, 43(3), 73.
Huangfu, Z., & Li, S. (2023). Lightweight You Only Look Once v8: An upgraded You Only Look Once v8 algorithm for small object identification in unmanned aerial vehicle images. Applied Sciences, 13(22), 12369.
He, C., & Saha, P. (2023). Investigating YOLO models towards outdoor obstacle detection for visually impaired people. arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.07571.
Faris, N., Zayed, T., Abdelkader, E. M., & Fares, A. (2023). Corrosion assessment using ground penetrating radar in reinforced concrete structures: Influential factors and analysis methods. Automation in Construction, 156, 105130.
Zhang, J., Peng, L., Wen, S., & Huang, S. (2024). A review on concrete structural properties and damage evolution monitoring techniques. Sensors, 24(2), 620.
Wang, B., Zhong, S., Lee, T. L., Fancey, K. S., & Mi, J. (2020). Non-destructive testing and evaluation of composite materials/structures: A state-of-the-art review. Advances in Mechanical Engineering, 12(4), 1–28.
Verma, S. K., Bhadauria, S. S., & Akhtar, S. (2016). In-situ condition monitoring of reinforced concrete structures. Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering, 10(4), 420–437.
Yue, Y., Liu, H., Lin, C., Meng, X., Liu, C., Zhang, X., et al. (2024). Automatic recognition of defects behind railway tunnel linings in GPR images using transfer learning. Measurement, 224, 113903.
Gao, Z., Fu, Z., Wen, M., Guo, Y., & Zhang, Y. (2024). Physical informed neural network for thermo-hydral analysis of fire-loaded concrete. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements, 158, 252–261.
Spears, M., Hedjazi, S., & Taheri, H. (2023). Ground penetrating radar applications and implementations in civil construction. Journal of Structural Integrity and Maintenance, 8(1), 36–49.
Wang, X., Zhang, Y., Liu, Q., & Wang, H. (2024). Prediction of the pore-pressure built-up and temperature of fire-loaded concrete with Pix2Pix. Computers, Materials and Continua, 79(2), 2907–2922.
Dinh, K., Gucunski, N., Kim, J., & Duong, T. H. (2016). Understanding depth-amplitude effects in assessment of GPR data from concrete bridge decks. NDT and E International, 83, 48–58.
Tesic, K., Baricevic, A., Serdar, M., & Gucunski, N. (2022). Characterization of ground penetrating radar signal during simulated corrosion of concrete reinforcement. Automation in Construction, 143, 104548.
Hong, S., Chen, D., & Dong, B. (2022). Numerical simulation and mechanism analysis of GPR-based reinforcement corrosion detection. Construction and Building Materials, 317, 125913.
Rhee, J. Y., Shim, J., Kee, S. H., & Lee, S. Y. (2020). Different characteristics of radar signal attenuation depending on concrete condition of bare bridge deck. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 24(7), 2049–2062.
Lachowicz, J., & Rucka, M. (2019). A novel heterogeneous model of concrete for numerical modelling of ground penetrating radar. Construction and Building Materials, 227, 116703.
Asadi, P., Gindy, M., & Alvarez, M. (2019). A machine learning based approach for automatic rebar detection and quantification of deterioration in concrete bridge deck ground penetrating radar B-scan images. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 23(6), 2618–2627.
Kaur, P., Dana, K. J., Romero, F. A., & Gucunski, N. (2016). Automated GPR rebar analysis for robotic bridge deck evaluation. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 46(10), 2265–2276.
Ahmed, H., Le, C. P., & La, H. M. (2023). Pixel-level classification for bridge deck rebar detection and localization using multi-stage deep encoder-decoder network. Developments in the Built Environment, 14, 100132.
Xiong, X., & Tan, Y. (2023). Deep learning-based detection of tie bars in concrete pavement using ground penetrating radar. International Journal of Pavement Engineering, 24(2), 2155648.
Chang, C. W., Lin, C. H., & Lien, H. S. (2009). Measurement radius of reinforcing steel bar in concrete using digital image GPR. Construction and Building Materials, 23(2), 1057–1063.
Giannakis, I., Giannopoulos, A., & Warren, C. (2021). A machine learning scheme for estimating the diameter of reinforcing bars using ground penetrating radar. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 18(3), 461–465.
Zhang, Y., Gao, Z., Wang, X., & Liu, Q. (2023). Image representations of numerical simulations for training neural networks. Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, 134(2), 821–833.
Xiang, Z., Ou, G., & Rashidi, A. (2020). An innovative approach to determine rebar depth and size by comparing GPR data with a theoretical database. In Construction Research Congress 2020. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 86–95.
Zhuang, X., Guo, H., Alajlan, N., Zhu, H., & Rabczuk, T. (2021). Deep autoencoder based energy method for the bending, vibration, and buckling analysis of Kirchhoff plates with transfer learning. European Journal of Mechanics. A, Solids, 87, 104225.
Liu, F., Liu, J., & Wang, L. (2022). Deep learning and infrared thermography for asphalt pavement crack severity classification. Automation in Construction, 140, 104383.
Park, S., Kim, J., Jeon, K., Kim, J., & Park, S. (2021). Improvement of gpr-based rebar diameter estimation using yolo-v3. Remote Sensing, 13(10), 2011.
Kuchipudi, S. T., Ghosh, D., & Gupta, H. (2022). Automated assessment of reinforced concrete elements using ground penetrating radar. Automation in Construction, 140, 104378.
Xue, C., Xia, Y., Wu, M., Chen, Z., Cheng, F., & Yun, L. (2024). EL-YOLO: An efficient and lightweight low-altitude aerial objects detector for onboard applications. Expert Systems with Applications, 256, 124848.
Lin, H., Parsi, A., Mullins, D., Horgan, J., Ward, E., Eising, C., et al. (2024). A study on data selection for object detection in various lighting conditions for autonomous vehicles. Journal of Imaging, 10(7), 153.
Li, L., Yang, L., Hao, Z., Sun, X., & Chen, G. (2024). Road sub-surface defect detection based on gprMax forward simulation-sample generation and Swin Transformer-YOLOX. Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering, 18(3), 334–349.
Alzubi, J., Nayyar, A., & Kumar, A. (2018). Machine learning from theory to algorithms: An overview. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1142, 012012.
Liao, L., Li, H., Shang, W., & Ma, L. (2022). An empirical study of the impact of hyperparameter tuning and model optimization on the performance properties of deep neural networks. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 31(3), 1–40.
Li, J., Cheng, K., Wang, S., Morstatter, F., Trevino, R. P., Tang, J., & Liu, H. (2017). Feature selection: A data perspective. ACM Computing Surveys, 50(6), 1–45.
Mumuni, A., & Mumuni, F. (2022). Data augmentation: A comprehensive survey of modern approaches. Array, 16, 100258.
Raschka, S. (2018). Model evaluation, model selection, and algorithm selection in machine learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.12808.
Singh, V., Pencina, M., Einstein, A. J., Liang, J. X., Berman, D. S., & Slomka, P. (2021). Impact of train/test sample regimen on performance estimate stability of machine learning in cardiovascular imaging. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 14490.
Zhuang, F., Qi, Z., Duan, K., Xi, D., Zhu, Y., Zhu, H., et al. (2021). A comprehensive survey on transfer learning. Proceedings of the IEEE, 109(1), 43–76.
Manataki, M., & Vafidis, A. (2021). GPR data interpretation approaches in archaeological prospection. Applied Sciences, 11(16), 7531.
Yang, C. C. (2006). Image enhancement by modified contrast-stretching manipulation. Optics and Laser Technology, 38(3), 196–201.
Lashgari, E., Liang, D., & Maoz, U. (2020). Data augmentation for deep-learning-based electroencephalography. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 346, 108885.
Bianchini Ciampoli, L., Tosti, F., Economou, N., & Benedetto, F. (2019). Signal processing of GPR data for road surveys. Geosciences, 9(2), 96.
Benedetto, A., Tosti, F., Bianchini Ciampoli, L., & D’Amico, F. (2017). An overview of ground-penetrating radar signal processing techniques for road inspections. Signal Processing, 132, 201–209.
Girshick, R., Donahue, J., Darrell, T., & Malik, J. (2014). Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. Columbus, OH: IEEE, 580–587.
Girshick, R. (2015). Fast R-CNN. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. Santiago: IEEE, 1440–1448.
Wu, Y., Kirillov, A., Massa, F., Lo, W.-Y., & Girshick, R. (2019). Detectron2.
Kumar, P. K., & Kumar, N. K. (2023). Drone-based apple detection: Finding the depth of apples using YOLOv7 architecture with multi-head attention mechanism. Smart Agricultural Technology, 5, 100311.
Padilla, R., Netto, S. L., & da Silva, E. A. (2020). A survey on performance metrics for object-detection algorithms. In 2020 International Conference on Systems, Signals and Image Processing. Niteroi: IEEE, 237–242.
Terven, J., & Cordova-Esparza, D. (2023). A comprehensive review of YOLO: From YOLOv1 to YOLOv8 and beyond. arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.00501.
Google Colab. (2025). Google Colaboratory.
Gholamy, A., Kreinovich, V., & Kosheleva, O. (2018). Why 70/30 or 80/20 relation between training and testing sets: A pedagogical explanation. International Journal of Intelligent Technology and Applications, 11(2), 105–111.
Harris, C. R., Millman, K. J., Van Der Walt, S. J., Gommers, R., Virtanen, P., Cournapeau, D., et al. (2020). Array programming with NumPy. Nature, 585(7825), 357–362.
Hunter, J. D. (2007). Matplotlib: A 2D graphics environment. Computing in Science and Engineering, 9(3), 90–95.
Juan, Y., Ke, Z., Chen, Z., Zhong, D., Chen, W., & Yin, L. (2024). Rapid density estimation of tiny pests from sticky traps using Qpest RCNN in conjunction with UWB-UAV-based IoT framework. Neural Computing and Applications, 36(17), 9779–9803.
Liu, C., Yao, Y., Li, J., Qian, J., & Liu, L. (2024). Research on lightweight GPR road surface disease image recognition and data expansion algorithm based on YOLO and GAN. Case Studies in Construction Materials, 20, e02779.
Article Statistics
Downloads
Copyright License
Copyright (c) 2025 Dr. Rajeev Nair (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Download Citations
How to Cite
Download Citation
Similar Articles
- ZHOU HUI , DR MOHAMMED SALEH NUSARI DR MOHAMMED SALEH NUSARI, DR. AIMAN AL-ODAINI DR. AIMAN AL-ODAINI, China's Environmental Modernization Challenges: An Examination Based on the Lesser Plateau Watershed Restoration Project , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 6 No. 02 (2024): Volume 06 Issue 02
- TIE WEIFANG, DR. NIDHI AGARWAL , A Research on the cultural contexts of online learning in Chinese and Flemish higher education putting student and instructor perspectives , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 6 No. 01 (2024): Volume 06 Issue 01
- Dr. Helena Costa, FRAMEWORKS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR EVALUATING THE QUALITY OF ARCHITECTURAL SPACES IN EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 7 No. 03 (2025): Volume 07 Issue 03
- ZHANG XIAO, DR MOHAMMED SALEH NUSARI, DR. AIMAN AL-ODAINI DR. AIMAN AL-ODAINI, A measurable evaluation of the connections between ground- and surface-water in erdos plateau, china's hailiutu river basin , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 6 No. 02 (2024): Volume 06 Issue 02
- Jonas Lindholm, ARCHITECTURAL FLOOR PLAN SYNTHESIS: A CONVERGENCE OF DATA-DRIVEN INTELLIGENCE, ALGORITHMIC DESIGN, AND HUMAN CREATIVITY , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 6 No. 03 (2024): Volume 06 Issue 03
- Dr. Deepak S. Menon, HARMONIZING FUNCTIONALITY AND INCLUSIVITY IN INDIAN INTERIOR DESIGN: A UNIVERSAL APPROACH , Journal of Management and Architecture Research: Vol. 7 No. 04 (2025): Volume 07 Issue 04
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.