Architectural structures today are increasingly complex and structural health monitoring plays an important role in guaranteeing their safety. How to improve the reliability of deformation analysis is, thus, one of the key problems. This article combines laser-based measurement technology and the Carrera unified formulation (CUF) method to investigate the deformation of engineering structures. Within this article, we simulate architectural structures using the CUF geometric model, which is consistent with the results of the laser tracker experiment. We aimed at constructing an intelligent and efficient CUF model which can be applied extensively in the monitoring of various constructs, such as tunnels and bridges. The innovation of this article is that high-accuracy laser tracker technology is integrated with an effective CUF model to investigate the load-displacement relationship considering lateral displacement.

Freeform parameterizations to reproduce structure deformation are increasingly important topics in laser-scanner-based deformation analyses. High-accuracy assurance of free-form surface approximation is extremely critical for reliable deformation analysis. One main challenge in this field is the model selection. Improper model complexity could result in under-fitting the real object shape or overfitting data noises, and thus a failure of deformation analysis. A multi-sensor system could integrate advantages of different sensors and improve the quality of mission completed. This paper combines terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and laser tracker (LT) technologies, to enhance high-accuracy surface modeling in deformation analysis. A surface-based B-spline approximation and a multi-sensor system are investigated, the latter of which focuses mainly on the combination of TLS and LT technologies. The innovation of this paper is that the surface-based B-spline approximation is validated and optimized with LT corner cube reflectors. Hypothesis testing is adopted to select the best parameter setting by judging most consistency of TLS and LT in various epochs. In the B-spline surface modeling, both instrumental and numerical uncertainties are considered. We use the instrumental uncertainty model based on intensity value, as well as numerical uncertainty based on adjustment theories. A sampling strategy is proposed to avoid data gaps and obtain even distributed data points.

This research work deals with the analysis of elastic shell structures in the large displacement and rotation field adopting one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) unified models. Namely, higher order beam and shell theories accounting for geometrical nonlinearities are formulated by employing a unified framework based on the Carrera unified formulation (CUF) and a total Lagrangian approach. Thus, a finite element (FE) approximation is used along with a Newton-Raphson method and an arc-length path-following approach to perform nonlinear analyses. Low- to higher order beam and shell theories are used to evaluate the nonlinear equilibrium path, and results are compared between the two models, with reference solutions coming from literature or 2D and three-dimensional (3D) models from NASTRAN. Convergence analyses show how CUF 1D models are able to describe the geometrical nonlinear behavior of analyzed structure with a lower number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) than 2D and 3D models.