Development of the damage assessment methodology for ceiling elements

Abstract

This paper presents the basic concept of a damage assessment methodology for ceiling elements with the aid of smart sensor board and inspection robot. In this proposed system, the distributed smart sensor boards firstly detect the fact of damage occurrence. Next, the robot inspects the damage location and captures the photographic image of damage condition. The smart sensor board for the proposed system mainly consists of microcontroller, strain gage and LAN module. The inspection robot integrated into the proposed system has a wireless camera and wireless LAN device for receiving signal to manipulate itself. At first, the effectiveness of the smart sensor board and inspection robot is tested by experiments of a full-scale suspended ceiling utilizing shaking table facilities. The model ceiling is subjected to several levels of excitations and thus various levels of damages are caused. Next, this robot inspection scheme is applied to the ceiling of a real structure damaged by the 2011 off the pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake. The obtained results indicate that the proposed system can detect the location and condition of the damage.