Int J Performability Eng ›› 2007, Vol. 3 ›› Issue (1): 187-197.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.07.1.p187.mag

• Original articles • Previous Articles    

Wall Inspection System for Safety Maintenance of High-Rise Buildings

KING-PUI LIU1, BING-LAM LUK1, TSZ-WING YEUNG1, SHIU-KIT TSO1, and FENG TONG2   

  1. 1Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
    2CAIE, Dept., of Oceanography, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China

Abstract:

To ensure safe use and durability of high-rise buildings, their walls must be properly maintained. This paper describes a wall inspection system, which applies an unmanned gondola and non-destructive test (NDT) technology. This system is designed to facilitate the costly and timely maintenance task of the exterior wall of high-rise buildings, especially when the wall is decorated by mosaic tiles. The aim is to determine the bonding condition of these tiles on wall. The NDT applies the impact acoustics technique that hits the wall point by point with a number of steel balls. Any de-bond state will be extracted, and the corresponding degree of such de-bond condition can also be determined. This system has been applied to inspect the exterior walls of public housing-estate buildings. The experimental results confirming the validity of this proposed system are included in this paper.
Received from the Guest Editor on July 31, 2006
References: 13