International Journal of Performability Engineering 

Volume 3, Number 1, January 2007

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Paper 16 - pp. 187-197 Return to Index 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   1Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2CAIE, Dept., of Oceanography, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China   (Received from the Guest Editor on July 31, 2006)   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.   Key Words:  safety maintenance, high-rise building, unmanned gondola, nondestructive test (NDT), impact echo and service robot        Click "Add to Cart" to purchase the full article