Automated dimensional quality assessment of precast concrete panels using terrestrial laser scanning

Abstract

Precast concrete panels are a popular component for many construction projects in the world. To safeguard the overall quality of these construction projects, it is imperative to ensure that the dimensions and the quality of precast concrete panels conform to their design specifications. It is, hence, necessary to develop techniques that can quickly measure the dimensions and reliably assess the quality of precast concrete panels. Currently, such measurement tasks mostly rely on trained inspectors, and the process can be rather time consuming. To address these limitations, this study presents a fully automated and non-contact measurement technique that measures and assesses the dimensions and the quality of precast concrete panels using a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS). An edge and corner extraction technique is developed to estimate the dimensional properties of precast concrete panels from TLS scanning data. To increase the measurement accuracy, a compensation model is employed to account for the dimension losses caused by an intrinsic limitation of TLS. Experimental tests are performed on a laboratory specimen as well as actual precast concrete panels to validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. The results demonstrate that the proposed technique can accurately and reliably measure the length, width and squareness of precast concrete panels in an automatic manner.