Arup University Doctoral College Conference 2012 - 3D Repo

56 Pages·2012·1.77 MB·English

Arup University
Doctoral College Conference 2012
Introduction
Jeremy Watson | Director Global Research
These are the proceedings of the second of This year it is particularly pleasing to see
Arup’s Doctoral College conferences. The many papers with direct relevance to Arup’s
Doctoral College comprises all of the 50+ businesses. However, in satisfying the
doctoral students sponsored by Arup whether needs of corporate research it is essential
staff or external candidates, and seeks to give to balance the drivers of ‘business pull’ on
them an intellectual home - a place to share what we research, with ‘opportunity push’.
ideas. We are delighted to support such a Serendipitous research has given the world
talented group of individuals, focusing on the lasers, fibre optic communications and the
research needs of our firm’s businesses, and internet, so we need to invest in both ways.
so helping to fulfill Arup’s Research strategy.
We hope you will enjoy the Conference and
The Doctoral College is part of Arup this publication. We trust that it demonstrates
University which aims to increase the return the relevance, value and diversity of our
on the intellectual capital of the firm by research to business leaders as well as
encouraging the connectivity with other growing and cementing our excellent
learning and sharing activities. partnerships with universities.
Session 1
Developing our world
Future-proofing building –
smart technology in building frames
Konrad Xuereb
Thesis topic Abstract
Future-proof Building Structures
The major urban demographic shift over the past half century has imposed a
Doctoral study area
Structural Engineering great strain on existing infrastructure and building stock. This resulted in an
increased trend to re-adapt existing buildings, especially in city centres. The
University
University College of London big challenge that this research seeks to address is the reassessment of building
Award structures as future-proof assets through the introduction of data-acquiring
PhD systems in structural frames.
Group
Arup Buildings London
Case studies on civil engineering projects incorporating data-acquiring
Date of study systems were assessed to inform strategies on how similar systems could be
January 2011 – December 2014
successfully implemented in buildings. A literature review on state-of-the art
sensors was carried out. This highlighted novel research on sensor typologies
that can be implemented in buildings. Meetings were held with interested
stakeholders to assess perceived added value offered by the proposed research
Value and the findings were presented.
The research is of value to
investors/clients as it augments A matrix setting out the attributes of each sensor typology against key
the assets’ value both in the characteristics was compiled to inform the most promising data-acquiring system
short and the long term. Other
to be implemented in building structural frames. The main challenges include
key stakeholders, including
reliability of systems, percolation, maintenance and replacement strategies. This
contractors, design consultants
and end users/tenants (if study served as a stepping stone to inform laboratory and in-situ tests on Arup
different from owners/ projects of preferred sensor typology to qualify viability of systems.
developers), will benefit from
the findings too.
Introduction Commercially available sensors are
Value to Arup:
extensively used in large civil engineering
The key problem identified by the research
• Implement more efficient and projects to form part of the assets’ value-
is the passive nature of structural systems
sustainable designs added structural health monitoring
of buildings which are often subservient to
system. They provide real time data on
• Become more influential in the
building form, with little impact on whole
design process the performance of infrastructural fabric
life sustainable criteria. This contrasts with
(bridges, tunnels, dams) allowing informed
• Become pioneers in the field heating, ventilation and air conditioning
decisions to be taken if monitored elements
through implementation of (HVAC) and security systems where smart
are overstressed or need replacement.
innovative solutions to existing systems are omnipresent. A radical rethink is
Data-acquiring systems can similarly be
challenges in buildings
necessary to unleash the building structure’s
implemented in building frames to provide
• Take advantage of Intellectual full potential in sustainable design, with
vital information on the behaviour of key
Property. Being in possession ensuing economical benefits. This research
components, environmental parameters acting
of performance data will reassesses building frames as future-proof
on the building, performance of the structure
allow Arup to seek trends and assets through the introduction of smart
over time and any residual structural capacity
possibly patent findings to sell
sensing devices within the structural frames.
to inform future adaptability of the buildings.
to third parties
Such systems would provide long term
benefits to various stakeholders including
owners, end users, design consultants and
contractors.
4 | Konrad Xuereb
The research topic focuses on state of
the art sensors and addresses innovative
implementation techniques in structural frames.
Methodology
The research focused on defining the need for
future-proofing buildings with respect to the
short and long-term benefits provided. Key
infrastructural projects with inbuilt data-
acquiring systems were studied to serve as
an analogy for the introduction of systems in
buildings. A literature review was conducted
on state-of-the-art sensors that could be
applied in buildings.
Implementation of monitoring systems
Figure 1: Stonecutters Bridge, Hong Kong – Intelligent Design and Health Monitoring System Implemented
in infrastructure and built environment (Wong et al)
projects
Case studies on the successful
implementation of structural health
monitoring in civil engineering structures
were carried out to serve as a tried-and-
tested analogy for the introduction of smart
technology in buildings. These studies
focused on bridges, tunnels and dams and
included the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong
Kong (see Figure 1) and the Humber
Bridge, UK. Tall buildings with inbuilt
smart technology serving other functions (eg
adaptive facades) were also studied. Projects
studied included the Al-Bahr Towers in Abu
Dhabi UAE and the Guangzhou New TV
Tower in Guangzhou, China (see Figure 2).
Current state-of-the art research on sensors
A detailed literature review was carried
out concurrently on novel data-acquiring
sensors. This review assessed intrinsic
(embedded within structural materials) and
extrinsic (located external to the structural
components) sensor typologies, depending on
their envisaged interaction with the buildings’
structure. The study on intrinsic sensors Figure 2: Guangzhou New TV Tower in Figure. 3: Stress sensing property of prismatic moulds without
focused on carbon nanotube-filled cement- Guangzhou, China additions (a) and with additions (b) of nanoparticles (Li et al)
based stress sensors, nanostructured concrete
(see Figure 3), smart aggregate, intelligent pressure sensors and load cells. The review
reinforced concrete structure and fibre optic concentrated on the potential use of these
sensors. The extrinsic sensor typologies novel sensors in building frames.
reviewed included fibre optic sensors, tactile
Doctoral College Conference | 2012 Konrad Xuereb | 5
Sensor typology Sensor
Attributes
Accessibility Design Reliability/ Ease of Manufacturing Versatility Potential Factored
for lifespan Drift (C) installation cost (E) of use in ubiquitous weight
maintenance/ (B) during construction use if (W)
replace- construction materials (F) manufacturing
ability (A) (D) cost reduced
(G)
Intrinsic Sensors:
Carbon nanotube- 2 10 8 6 2 6 10 58
filled cement-
based stress
sensors
Nanostructured 2 10 6 6 4 4 8 54
concrete
Smart aggregate 2 8 6 8 4 4 8 55
Intelligent 2 8 6 8 6 4 6 56
reinforced concrete
structures
Fibre optic sensors 4 6 8 4 8 4 8 59
Extrinsic Sensors:
Fibre optic sensors 6 8 8 4 8 8 4 63
Tactile pressure 6 6 4 8 6 8 10 64
sensors
Load cells 8 8 8 2 8 6 4 60
Table 1: Comparative Matrix (based on key assumptions made by the author).
Notes:
1. Scoring between 1 to 10. Highest scoring denotes easiest access for maintenance, longest design lifespan, most reliable system experiencing least
drift, ease of installation, least expensive and highest versatility.
2. Adopted factored weight W is derived from following function: W = 1.25A + 1.25B + 1.5C + 1.5D + 1.75E + F + 1.25G
3. Factored weights are rounded to the closest integer number
Meetings with key stakeholders the assets. Long-term attributes identified
In order to consolidate the perceived added include sustainability, adaptability and
value of these systems in buildings, strategic enhanced flexibility. Desirable trends include
meetings were held with key stakeholders, the ability for buildings to adapt to different
including real estate fund managers, functions in the future and their ability to be
developers, architects and contractors. designed for longer lifespans. The real-time
The ambitions of the research project were data attained on the structure’s performance
presented and the perceived opportunities and forms part of the asset’s intellectual property
disadvantages debated. Key findings from the and can be used to determine trends. To
meetings were recorded. be ubiquitously introduced, the systems
need to also provide short-term benefits.
Results and discussions This is of particular relevance to short-term
investors who sell the asset after a few
Findings from meetings with stakeholders
years. Data-acquiring systems can enhance
These meetings indicate the important
the asset’s quality control in the short-term,
attributes needed by smart systems to be
reducing uncertainty if doubt is cast on the
successful, in particular reliability and
performance of certain structural components.
cost effectiveness. The latter attribute
They are also of relevant use to contractors,
measures the added value to the asset against
especially if the structural behaviour during
upfront premium necessary to introduce
construction differs considerably from
the technology. Given the long-term nature
permanent cases.
of real estate assets, components that add
long-term value provide great benefit to
6 | Konrad Xuereb
Findings from literature review on novel Acknowledgements
sensors
The author would like to
The intrinsic and extrinsic sensor typologies acknowledge following entities for
explored were assessed against key their contribution in the research
carried out thus far:
characteristics and a respective scoring was
given against each attribute. The characteristics Arup University
considered included accessibility for Professor Ivan Parkin, UCL
maintenance and replaceability, design Professor Julian Evans, UCL
lifespan, reliability of system (as a function of Professor Jeremy Watson
drift of data), ease of installation, versatility
Arup Buildings London
of use and cost of implementation. A weighed
scoring was given against each attribute. These
References
were summarised in a comparative matrix (see
http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/
Table 1) to determine preferred intrinsic and situation_trends/urban_population_growth_
text/en/index.html;
extrinsic systems.
The Climate Group, Arup, Accenture,
University of Nottingham; Information
Marketplaces, The New Economics of Cities
Conclusion and next steps (2011); p.11 – 20.
Smart Infrastructure: The Future. The Royal
Academy of Engineering (January 2012); p.
The case studies explored serve as reference 6,14–15.
systems for the proposed introduction of smart Brownjohn J.M.W.; Structural Health
Monitoring of Civil Infrastructures;
technology in building structural frames. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society A(2007); Vol. No. 365; p. 589-622.
The strategic meetings held with stakeholders Wong K.; Design of a Structural Health
Monitoring System for Long-Span Bridges;
emphasised the attributes that needed to be Structure and Infrastructure Engineering:
Maintenance, Management, Life Cycle design
provided by the system to be successful. and Performance; Vol. No. 3; Issue 2; p.
169-185.
Based on the comparative matrix and the
Ni Y.Q., Zhou H.F.; Guangzhou New
important assumptions made by the author, TV Tower: Integrated Structural Health
Monitoring and Vibration Control; 2010
a preferred sensor system was determined. Structural Congress ASCE
Demczyk B.G., Wang Y.M., Cumings J., et al;
Extrinsic tactile pressure sensors, intrinsic Direct Mechanical Measurement of the Tensile
Strength and Elastic Modulus of Multiwalled
fibre optic sensors and carbon nanotube-filled Carbon Nanotubes; Material Science and
Engineering; A 334 (2002); Pages 173-178.
cement-based sensors are the most promising
Dzenis Y.; Structural Nanocomposites;
typologies. Science; Vol. No. 319 (25th January 2008);
p. 419-420
9.L.Raki, J.Beaudoin, R.Alizadeh, J.Makar,
T.Sato; Cement and Concrete Nanoscience and
Having concluded the literature review, the Nanotechnology; Materials (2010) Vol. No. 3;
p. 918-942.
next steps envisaged include:
H.Li, H Xiao, J.Ou; A study of mechanical
and pressure-sensitive properties of cement
• Laboratory tests, including accelerated tests mortar with nanophase materials; Cement
and Concrete Research; Vol. No. 34 (2004);
to quantify drift p. 435-438.
G.Song, H.Gu, Y.L.Mo; Smart Aggregate:
• Review results of laboratory tests Multi Functional Sensors for Concrete
Structures - A Tutorial and a Review; Smart
• Assess feasibility of, and map out detailed Material Structures, Vol. No. 17 (2008); p.
1-17.
plan for implementing tests in actual Mohamad H., Soga K., Pellew A., Bennett
P.; Performance Monitoring of a Secant
projects Piled Wall using Distributed Fiber Optic
Strain Sensing; Journal of Geotechnical and
• Carry out tests in actual projects Geoenvironmental Engineering; December
2011; p. 1236-1243.
• Review initial results of tests carried out on Tennyson R.C., Mufti A.A, Rizkalla S.,
Tadros G., Benmorkrane B.; Structural Health
actual projects Monitoring of Innovative Bridges in Canada
With Fibre Optic Sensors; Smart Materials and
Structures; Vol. No. 10 (2001); p. 560-573.
• Carry out critique of results attained
Paikowsky S., Palmer C., Rolwes L.; The Use
of Tactile Sensor Technology for Measuring
• Complete research Soil Stress Distribution; Geotechnical
Engineering in the Information Technology
Age; ASCE GeoCongress 2006, Atlanta,
Georgia; 26th February – 1st March 2006.
Hoult N., Bennett P., Stoianov I., Fidler P.,
Maksimovic C., Middleton C., Graham N.,
Soga K.; Wireless Sensor Networks: creating
‘smart infrastructures’; Civil Engineering; Vol.
No. 162 (August 2009) p. 136–143.
Doctoral College Conference | 2012 Konrad Xuereb- | 7
3D Repo: Revision control
framework for 3D assets
Jozef Doboš
Thesis topic Abstract
Real-Time Computer Graphics for
Visualising the Built Environment
The maintenance of assets in a large 3D visualisation can involve many authors
Doctoral study area with potentially different skills and tools. This presents problems, not limited to
Computer Graphics
maintaining consistency of the models and dealing with concurrent edits in the
University same part of a 3D scene. To address these issues, Arup developed a unified and
University College London
integrated framework 3D Repo (http://3drepo.org) that supports collaborative
Award editing and distribution of 3D assets. This framework tracks multiple revisions
Engineering Doctorate (EngD)
of 3D assets so that they can be integrated at a later date. It thus provides similar
Group
functionality to file-based revision control systems, but is built around a NoSQL
Foresight, Innovation & Incubation
database, hence avoiding the constraints of a file-based system. The framework
Date of study
also supports distributed editing over the Internet and additional lightweight
January 2010 – January 2014
clients in web-browsers and mobile devices. Such an approach is expected to
improve the engineering as well as public engagement and considerably reduce
the costs of future industrial development.
Value
Introduction Methodology
• Possibility of future tools and
vision of digital environments
With the recent progress in the capabilities Spatial databases originate from the
for experimental design and
of graphics processing units, there is a desire geographic information systems domain.
novel designers’ perception of
for even larger and more detailed models They store features such as points, lines,
the finalised projects in their
to be used during the design stages of areas and their associated metadata such as
pre-production phases
architectural and engineering projects. The heights, names, etc. A few commercial and
• New opportunities for
standard paradigm of collaborative editing open source databases support spatial data
stakeholders as well as general
is sharing of files between various instances directly, e.g. Oracle Spatial and PostGIS for
public engagement in new cost
of applications. Each user loads a particular PostgreSQL. However, they focus on 2D
effective ways
3D scene into a modelling tool, modifies geometry, not 3D models and their properties.
• Projects’ design life-cycle and it and then re-saves the whole file again, They also do not support the type of revision
development considerably
making any version tracking and sharing histories that is commonly required in 3D
enriched
unnecessarily obfuscated. By the time a asset management. In contrast, NoSQL
• Seamless integration into simulation is completed, the design might databases avoid rigid table structures and
existing production pipelines progress so rapidly that the results are often tend to be optimised for large read-write
and significantly improved inapplicable. What is more, when developing operations. It is thus possible to store models
collaborative exploration and
land or transportation systems, it is a legal in a database and, due to its flexibility, also
simulation runs
requirement to host public inquiry during track other associated data such as semantic
which the general public can voice their relationships and even individual revisions
Acknowledgements concerns. Such an event can incur significant as done in 3D Repo. Similarly, a proprietary
costs and for very large projects risks not geospatial CityServer3D (http://cityserver3d.
This research was sponsored
by Arup Foresight and the UK reaching the key stakeholders. In order to de) from Fraunhofer Institute supports a
EPSRC-funded Eng. Doctorate mitigate these problems, Arup’s Collaborative NoSQL MongoDB as well as relational
Centre in Virtual Environments,
Map (http://www.collaborativemap.org) MySQL, PostreSQL and Oracle databases for
Imaging and Visualisation (EP/
G037159/1). We would like to displays localised comments as an overlay its back-end.
thank Kenny Mitchell at the on a 2D map. Here, the concept was taken
former Black Rock Studio and
further and developed into a 3D platform
Alvise Simondetti at Arup for the
discussions that informed this work. that can be used for collaborative 3D editing
as well as public visualisations and data
gathering. If successful, this application will
be deployed as a web-based service.
8 | Jozef Doboš
The prototype implementation of 3D Repo
uses the open source MongoDB as its 3D
repository. There, it assigns two collections
(tables) per 3D scene, one for all the scene
graph constituents and one for all the
documents that belong to a revision history.
Hence, each of these collections stores a
directed acyclic graph, making the access
implementation reusable. Once the data is in
a database, access is implicitly supported in
a distributed manner via a dedicated query
language. Several database front-ends were
developed, see Figure 1, most notably the
C++ read-write Graphical User Interface
(GUI) with a 3D differencing built in.
Figure 1a: C++ read-write GUI
Results and discussion
The interaction between modelling software
and the repository takes place through the
import and export of files. This successfully
decouples the modelling from its long-term
storage as the files are now considered to be
only a temporary representation of 3D assets.
Such an approach is of great importance as the
range of editing tools used across Arup is vast.
Some of the main features of the framework
are demonstrated as follows:
1. As shown in Figure 1, it is possible to
retrieve any revision from the repository
and visualise it within a web browser. Here,
examples of all types of the applications are
Figure 1b: WebGL read-only GUI (Firefox)
present. The first is the read-write C++ GUI,
the second a read-only web viewer and the
third a mobile Android read-write app.
2. Figure 2 demonstrates the actual changes
stored within the repository. Those scene
graph components that have not been
modified are queried from their latest
revision, hence the requirements for storage
are relatively small in comparison to other
tracking methodologies.
A serious problem with schema-less NoSQL
databases is a lack of data validation on
insertion, unless specified as a unique
key. Hence it would be necessary to Figure 1c: Mobile read-write GUI (Android)
implement a server-side daemon acting as
a database interface for a production-ready
Doctoral College Conference | 2012 Jozef Doboš | 9
References
Doboš, J., Steed, A. 3d revision control
framework. Proc. 17th International Conf.
on 3D Web
Tech., ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2012,
121–129.
Doboš, J., Steed, A. 3d diff: an interactive
approach to mesh differencing and conflict
resolution. Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH Asia,
2012.
Kothuri, R.V, Godfrind, A., Beinat, E. Pro
oracle spatial for oracle database 11g. Apress
Academic, 2012.
Membrey, P., Plugge, E.,Hawkins, T. The
definitive guide to mongodb: The NoSQL
Database for Cloud &Desktop Computing,
first ed. APRESS ACADEMIC, 2010.
Obe, R., Hsu, L. Postgis in Action. Manning
Publications, 1st edition, 2011. Figure 2a: Revision history
Rigaux, P., Scholl, M., Voisard, A. Spatial
databases: with application to gis. Morgan
Kaufmann, 2001.
Figure 2b: Revision 0 and 8 respectively
implementation of the framework. This believes that this approach offers significant
would need to facilitate revision control, benefits over alternative techniques such
analyse commits and check for consistencies as Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
instead of relying on a GUI implementation. This NoSQL-based solution can be extended
In addition, the framework relies on imported to support various data types including the
3D assets to preserve revision metadata (ID Building Information Modelling (BIM) or
and a revision number) for each component. other representations. The intention is to build
this into a robust platform that can be used
Conclusion and next steps by the community. In the next release, the
implementation will be expanded to capture
3D Repo automatically serves models
textures in the database and will offer a plug-
from a centralised repository and records
in based access for one or more standard
annotations alongside the preserved assets
3D modelling package with locking
and their individual revisions. In order to
mechanism enabled.
offer a scalable visualisation platform, it
streams decomposed scene graph components
onto client devices, reconstructs their 3D
representation and displays them for viewing.
Given the direct database connection,
the scalability of MongoDB and its built-
in support for geospatial indexing, Arup
10 | Jozef Doboš