A Comparison Method for 3D Laser Point Clouds in Displacement Change Detection for Arch Dams

Abstract

Dam deformation monitoring can directly identify the safe operation state of a dam in advance, which plays an important role in dam safety management. Three-dimensional (3D) terrestrial laser scanning technology is widely used in the field of deformation monitoring due to its fast, complete, and high-density 3D data acquisition capabilities. However, 3D point clouds are characterized by rough surfaces, discrete distributions, which affect the accuracy of deformation analysis of two states data. In addition, it is impossible to directly extract the correspondence points from an irregularly distributed point cloud to unify the coordinates of the two states' data, and the correspondence lines and planes are often difficult to obtain in the natural environment. To solve the above problems, this paper studies a displacement change detection method for arch dams based on two-step point cloud registration and contour model comparison method. In the environment around a dam, the stable rock is used as the correspondence element to improve the registration accuracy, and a two-step registration method from rough to fine using the iterative closest point algorithm is present to describe the coordinate unification of the two states’ data without control network and target. Then, to analyze the displacement variation of an arch dam surface in two states and improve the accuracy of comparing the two surfaces without being affected by the roughness of the point cloud, the contour model fitting the point clouds is used to compare the change in distance between models. Finally, the method of this paper is applied to the Xiahuikeng Arch Dam, and the displacement changes of the entire dam in different periods are visualized by comparing with the existing methods. The results show that the displacement change in the middle area of the dam is generally greater than that of the two banks, increasing with the increase in elevation, which is consistent with the displacement change behavior of the arch dam during operation and can reach millimeter-level accuracy.

Gpu Utilization in Geoprocessing Big Geodata: A Review

“…3D point cloud technology enables the automated (Paffenholz et al, 2021) and extremely detailed digital capture of real-world (Y. Li et al, 2021) settings such as assets (S. Y. Lee et al, 2013), sites area (Shih & Wang, 2014), cities (Buyuksalih et al, 2019;Park &Guldmann, 2019), andvegetation (Mesas-Carrascosa et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2015); the obtained 3D point clouds represent an important type of geospatial data that categorized and utilised in wide range of geoinformation applications and systems (Ariff et al, 2020;Discher et al, 2018;Richter et al, 2015).…”

Geoinformation technologies in the evaluation of short-term geomorphic change: An example of Damdere debris flood area (Bulgaria)

“…Despite the indisputable advantages of the M3C2 (Lague et al, 2013), DoD gives reliable results when it is applied to flat or near to flat areas in a small size. The model-to-model comparison reduces the impact of point cloud roughness on the accuracy of point cloud distance calculation (Li et al, 2021). Also, an advantage of DoD is easy calculation of volumes, but on the other side, in case of no data in some parts of the studied area due to vegetation or absence of visibility, the results depend on interpolation method and the resolution of the model.…”

“…In this relation, the application of geospatial technologies provides great opportunities (Aigner et al, 2021;Blasone et al, 2014;Dhote et al, 2022;Keilig et al, 2018;Loye et al, 2016;Nikolova, Matev, & Pophristov, 2021). The application of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) allows rapid collection of high-accuracy data used for building high-resolution terrain models and the evaluation of geomorphic change by consecutive scanning in different periods (Li et al, 2021;Picco et al, 2013;Rainato et al, 2013;Schürch et al, 2011). This approach is used in the current study with the aim to analyze the short-term topographic change, driven by debris flood in a small mountain catchment.…”

Application of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry

“…Deformation measurement is focused on changes in the relative position of a structure, which requires the collection scanning data at a certain interval to maintain periodic monitoring of the structural response by comparing data at different time points. Various case studies have been carried out on the monitoring of engineering structures, including buildings [ 104 , 145 ], dams [ 113 , 122 , 126 , 130 ], bridges [ 59 , 100 , 105 , 106 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 116 , 118 , 119 , 121 , 123 , 124 , 128 , 137 , 144 ], tunnels [ 57 , 80 , 103 , 107 , 114 , 115 , 117 , 125 , 127 , 129 , 131 , 132 , 134 , 135 , 136 , 139 , 140 ], stations [ 99 , 143 ], foundation pits [ 186 ], pipe racks [ 52 ], towers [ 101 ], and many others. In addition, another main direction of studies for deformation measurement is to perform structural health monitoring of infrastructures that are in service for a long time, especially for masonry [ 99 , 1...…”