Microbiological dating of a crack's age depends upon establishing a viable method of sampling biomass from surfaces. Age is based upon the hypothesis that the amount of biomass on a given crack surface is proportional to the time that has passed since the surface was exposed. Presented herein is the development and verification of a method to measure biomass volume on a rough surface of a construction material. Differentiation, detection and measurement of the biomass volume are accomplished with a confocal laser scanning microscope through the use of fluorescence. Determination of crack age is an important forensic issue. Each year millions of dollars are spent on arbitration and litigation arising from damage claimed to have been produced by some recent adjacent activity such as heavy traffic, construction, blasting, etc. or some recent natural phenomenon, such as an earthquake, hurricane, flood, etc. Once the crack is identified as a concern, focus most often turns to an investigation of the age of the crack relative to the time of the unusual event. Current methods of dating cracks are often subjective, limited in their application and yield relative age, rather than absolute age which can be provided by biological age dating.

Last modified

• 09/19/2018

Creator

• Laura Sullivan-Green

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2JQ8R

Subject

• Civil and Environmental Engineering

Keyword

• Concrete
• Confocal Microscopy
• Crack Dating
• Biomass Quantification

Date created

• 2008-08-19

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright