Three-Dimensional Intersection Method for Monitoring and Analysis of Horizontal and Vertical Movements of Buildings

Abstract

Deformation monitoring of the engineering structures such as buildings provides information about the health of the structures and their safety aspects as well as the safety of the public.

This paper describes the development of a method for the monitoring and analysis of vertical and horizontal movements of structures. The proposed method is developed to add a new solution to traditional methods of the three-dimensional intersection for getting the spatial coordinates of points. A software was developed to provide a simultaneous solution to all observations and data in one step using a least-squares solution to improve the expected accuracy and to generate the necessary data for statistical analysis.

The proposed method was used for monitoring and analyzing the movements of high-rise buildings in Cairo, Egypt. A traverse of four points and well-distributed twenty-three monitoring points were used. All measurements were taken using total station.

The observations were carried out at four epochs of the two-month interval. The developed software was used for getting the adjusted ground coordinates of the monitoring points, observations and generating the necessary statistical data.

The results of the first epoch were used as reference values such that the subsequent epochs values were compared with them to compute the horizontal and vertical movements of the monitoring points for each epoch. Furthermore, values of horizontal and vertical movements were compared with their corresponding computed 95% confidence intervals to determine the significance of the existing displacement. The results show the horizontal and vertical stability of the building during the monitoring period.

The case study shows the efficiency of the proposed method for the monitoring of the deformation of the building structures.

It is strongly recommended that engineering structures especially high-rise buildings should be monitored on a regular basis to check their stability and thereby increasing their safety.