Shake Table Damage Detection with Terrestrial Laser Scanners

Structural assessment activities present two challenges - collecting high quality damage data and interpreting the acquired data in a meaningful and rational way - to produce estimates of the level of safety and residual strength of the inspected building. While advanced data acquisition systems are available to collect structural damage data, new methods are needed to analyze the collected data to assess structural performance. This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) supported a team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Nevada, Reno, to collaborate with researchers from Japanese universities on experimental research investigating the seismic performance of RC building systems. The experimental research will involve the dynamic testing of a full-scale, three-story RC building as part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Resilience Project (TMRP) supported in Japan by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience. The experiments were conducted at the world's largest shake table, E-Defense in Miki, Japan, in December 2019. The main goal of this RAPID project was to acquire, process, and analyze dynamic response and damage data pertaining to both structural and non-structural elements of the building. The data was collected using equipment from the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID Facility (https://rapid.designsafe-ci.org/).

In this RAPID project, the Japanese and U.S. research team investigated the seismic performance of a full-scale, three-story RC building system tested at the E-Defense shake table as part of the Japanese TMRP project. The key objectives of this collaborative project were to: (1) provide better understanding of dynamic response of RC buildings, (2) investigate the capabilities of new instrumentation to capture structural performance and damage data, and (3) evaluate current post-earthquake structural assessment procedures and use the acquired data to provide information for refinements. The collected data and structural assessment procedures can also help policymakers in the U.S., Japan, and other countries to plan retrofit efforts strategically and effectively.

The data published here-in contains detailed lidar point clouds of the test specimen before testing and after three consecutively larger ground motions. The raw points clouds from each scan position are provided as well as the the combined scans in a very large 3D detailed lidar model that was processed by the RAPID Facility. The data sets contain numerous examples of concrete frame damage captured with lidar and may be valuable in developing an training algorithms for damage detection and quantification from lidar data or for understanding the observed damage mechanisms in more detail.

The experimental program was led by Prof. Kiochi Kusunoki. The experimental program and results can be found here: Trevor Zhiqing Yeow, Koichi Kusunoki, Izumi Nakamura, Yo Hibino, Satoru Fukai & Walid Ahmad Safi (2022) E-Defense Shake-table Test of a Building Designed for Post-disaster Functionality, Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 26:10, 5153-5174, DOI: 10.1080/13632469.2020.1865219