Influence of ambient temperature on building monitoring in urban areas during the construction of tunnels for transportation

• Autores: Zengzeng Lian
• Directores de la Tesis: María Amparo Núñez Andrés (dir. tes.), José Antonio Gili Ripoll (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2015
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Ángel Esteban Martín Furones (presid.), Nieves Lantada Zarzosa (secret.), Jordi Padín Devesa (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería del Terreno por la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
• Materias:
  • Ciencias tecnológicas
    • Tecnología de la construcción
      • Ingeniería civil
      • Topografía de la edificación
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
• Resumen

  • A large number of underground works are under construction in several big cities around the world (London, Paris, Amsterdam, Beijing, Shanghai, Chicago, Caracas, Mexico D.F., and Riad, for instance): railway tunnels, water supplies and other kinds of underground structures. In the last decade several underground infrastructures have been designed and constructed in the city of Barcelona, Spain, as well; e.g. the new line 9 of the city underground and the city junction for the High Velocity train that links Madrid and Barcelona with France. During the construction, intensive monitoring is becoming an increasingly common practice in order to guarantee the safety of the people, buildings and other infrastructures on the surface. Among others, the Robotic Total Stations (RTS) play an important role in the task. In these monitoring works, some "Thermal Effects" have occasionally appeared in the graphs, between winter/summer and day/night situation. Sometimes this undesirable noise has produced discussion among the infrastructure actors. As this effect has not been adequately studied so far, the present PhD aims to improve the basic knowledge and the current practice in the building monitoring in urban areas during underground works when the scene is affected by temperature changes. To characterize and, eventually, to correct the aforementioned influence of the "ambient' variables", a computer simulation program has been implemented. The code can simulate the movement of the buildings when the temperature changes, and proves that the thermal influence on structure deformation monitoring cannot be ignored in the practice. The PhD work has taken advantage of an experimental monitoring area built at the UPC Campus Nord (Barcelona, Spain) within an I+D project, with Robotic Total Stations and other sensors (temperature, tilt, levelling, insolation and other meteorological data), acquiring data during two years and a half. The fieldwork and data processing have been used to improve and adjust the numerical simulation model. Several approaches have been tested with the program. Strategies D, B and K permit us, respectively, to simulate the standard monitoring practice, to "fully" filter the thermal effect, and to filter it while preserving the building's own movements. Apart from helping in the mitigation of the quoted influence, these results may eventually facilitate the improvement of the present monitoring practices.