High-rise buildings subjected to lateral loads such as wind and earthquake loads
must be checked not to exceed the limits on the maximum lateral displacement or the
maximum inter-story drift ratios. In this paper, a sensing model for deformed shapes of a
building structure in motion is presented. The deformed shape sensing model based on a
2D scanner consists of five modules: (1) module for acquiring coordinate information of a
point in a building; (2) module for coordinate transformation and data arrangement for
generation of time history of the point; (3) module for smoothing by adjacent averaging
technique; (4) module for generation of the displacement history for each story and
deformed shape of a building, and (5) module for evaluation of the serviceability of a
building. The feasibility of the sensing model based on a 2D laser scanner is tested through
free vibration tests of a three-story steel frame structure with a relatively high slenderness
ratio of 5.0. Free vibration responses measured from both laser displacement sensors and a
2D laser scanner are compared. In the experimentation, the deformed shapes were obtained
from three different methods: the model based on the 2D laser scanner, the direct
measurement based on laser displacement sensors, and the numerical method using
acceleration data and the displacements from GPS. As a result, it is confirmed that the
deformed shape measurement model based on a 2D laser scanner can be a promising
alternative for high-rise buildings where installation of laser displacement sensors
is impossible.