Deformation monitoring of structural elements using terrestrial laser scanner

Zaki M. Zeidan, Ashraf A. Beshr, Ashraf G. shehata

Civil infrastructure systems is important in terms of both safety and serviceability. So, large structure have been monitored using surveying techniques, while fine-scale monitoring of structural components has been done with geotechnical instrumentation. The advantages and disadvantages of using remote sensing methods, such as terrestrial laser scanning and digital close range photogrammetry, for the purposes of precise 3D reconstruction and the estimation of deflections in structural elements. This paper investigate that terrestrial laser scanner can be used for the monitoring of concrete beams subjected to different loading conditions. The system used does not require any physical targets. The setup was tested, and the beam deflections resulted from the 3D model from terrestrial laser scanner system were compared to the ones from ANSYS program. The experiments proved that it was possible to detect sub-millimeter level deformations given the used equipment and the geometry of the setup. Calculations and analysis of results are presented.