Automated BIM Reconstruction of Full-Scale Complex Tubular Engineering Structures Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning
Jiepeng Liu, Lihua Fu, Guozhong Cheng, Dongsheng Li, Jing Zhou, Na Cui, Y. Frank Chen
Abstract
Due to the accumulation of manufacturing errors of components and construction errors, there are always deviations between an as-built complex tubular engineering structure (CTES) and its as-designed model. As terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides accurate point cloud data (PCD) for scanned objects, it can be used in the building information modeling (BIM) reconstruction of as-built CTESs for life cycle management. However, few studies have focused on the BIM reconstruction of a full-scale CTES from missing and noisy PCD. To this end, this study proposes an automated BIM reconstruction method based on the TLS for a full-scale CTES. In particular, a novel algorithm is proposed to extract the central axis of a tubular structure. An extended axis searching algorithm is applied to segment each component PCD. A slice-based method is used to estimate the geometric parameters of curved tubes. The proposed method is validated through a full-scale CTES, where the maximum error is 0.92 mm.