An advanced vision-based system for real-time displacement measurement of high-rise buildings

Abstract

This paper introduces an advanced vision-based system for dynamic real-time displacement measurement of high-rise buildings using a partitioning approach. The partitioning method is based on the successive estimation of relative displacements and rotational angles at several floors using a multiple vision-based displacement measurement system. In this study, two significant improvements were made to realize the partitioning method: (1) time synchronization, (2) real-time dynamic measurement. Displacement data and time synchronization information are wirelessly transferred via a network using the TCP/IP protocol. The time synchronization process is periodically conducted by the master system to guarantee the system time at the master and slave systems are synchronized. The slave system is capable of dynamic real-time measurement and it is possible to economically expand measurement points at slave levels using commercial devices. To verify the accuracy and feasibility of the synchronized multi-point vision-based system and partitioning approach, many laboratory tests were carried out on a three-story steel frame model. Furthermore, several tests were conducted on a five-story steel frame tower equipped with a hybrid mass damper to experimentally confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system.