Gage-Free Stress Estimation of a Beam-like Structure Based on Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is a technique that remotely obtains the three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of an object using laser pulses. It is advantageous when used to obtain the 3D coordinates of the overall shape as well as any particular area or point of a target object. In addition, using TLS for the stress monitoring of structures will not require the installation of a sensor on the target structure whose structural response will be assessed. Thus, TLS can resolve the limitations of conventional sensors based on strain monitoring. This article presents a computational model for the automatic estimation of the stresses of beam structures using TLS in association with a finite element method. The method is experimentally applied to the stress estimation of a simply supported steel beam subjected to a concentrated load. In this experimentation, the maximum and minimum errors between the estimated stresses using TLS and directly measured stresses from electrical strain gages are found to be 7.2% and 2.2%, respectively.