Towards generation of as-damaged BIM models using laser-scanning and as-built BIM: First estimate of as-damaged locations of reinforced concrete frame members in masonry infill structures

After an earthquake, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) can capture point clouds of the damaged state of building facades rapidly, remotely and accurately. A long-term research effort aims to develop applications that can reconstruct ‘as-damaged’ BIM models of reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings based on their ‘as-built’ BIM models and scans of their ‘as-damaged’ states. This paper focuses on a crucial step: generating an initial ‘best-guess’ for the new locations of the façade structural members. The output serves as the seed for a recursive process in which the location and damage to each object is refined in turn. Locating the ‘as-built’ structural members in the ‘as-damaged’ scan is challenging because each member may have different displacement and damage. An algorithm was developed and tested for the case of reinforced concrete frames with masonry infill walls. It exploits the topology of the frames to map the original structural grid onto the damaged façade. The tests used synthetic datasets prepared from records of two earthquake-damaged buildings. In both cases, the results were sufficiently accurate to allow progress to the following step, assessment of the individual structural members

A Computational Procedure for Generating Specimens of BIM and Point Cloud Data for Building Change Detection

The potential for automated construction quality inspection, construction progress tracking and post-earthquake damage assessment drives research in interpretation of remote sensing data and compilation of semantic models of buildings in different states. However, research efforts are often hampered by a lack of full-scale datasets. This is particularly the case for earthquake damage assessment research, where acquisition of scans is restricted by scarcity of access to post-earthquake sites. To solve this problem, we have developed a procedure for compiling digital specimens in both pre- and post-event states and for generating synthetic data equivalent to which would result from laser scanning in the field. The procedure is validated by comparing the physical and synthetic scans of a damaged beam. Interpretation of the beam damage from the synthetic data demonstrates the feasibility of using this procedure to replace physical specimens with digital models for experimentation and for other civil engineering applications

Three-body DDˉπD\bar{D}\pi dynamics for the X(3872)

We investigate the role played by the three-body $D\bar{D}\pi$ dynamics on the near-threshold resonance X(3872) charmonium state, which is assumed to be formed by nonperturbative $D\bar D^*$ dynamics. It is demonstrated that, as compared to the naive static-pions approximation, the imaginary parts that originate from the inclusion of dynamical pions reduce substantially the width from the $D\bar{D}\pi$ intermediate state. In particular, for a resonance peaked at 0.5 MeV below the $D^0\bar D^{*0}$ threshold, this contribution to the width is reduced by about a factor of 2, and the effect of the pion dynamics on the width grows as long as the resonance is shifted towards the $D^0\bar{D^0}\pi^0$ threshold. Although the physical width of the $X$ is dominated by inelastic channels, our finding should still be of importance for the $X$ line shapes in the $D\bar{D}\pi$ channel below $D{\bar D}^*$ threshold. For example, in the scattering length approximation, the imaginary part of the scattering length includes effects of all the pion dynamics and does not only stem from the $D^*$ width. Meanwhile, we find that another important quantity for the $X$ phenomenology, the residue at the $X$ pole, is weakly sensitive to dynamical pions. In particular, we find that the binding energy dependence of this quantity from the full calculation is close to that found from a model with pointlike $D\bar D^*$ interactions only, consistent with earlier claims. Coupled-channel effects (inclusion of the charged $D\bar{D}^*$ channel) turn out to have a moderate impact on the results.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, version to appear in Phys.Rev.

Microshower structure of the meteor complex

Meteor radar observations of ionized trails in the Earth's atmosphere provide observations that do not depend on weather conditions and time of day and provide good statistics for analysis. Further development in the new quasitomographic analysis of the goniometric data of the Kazan meteoric radar has revealed a number of very weak meteoric streams with rates of more than 5-6 meteors per day. In addition to the known large meteor showers, we have found up to as many as 1000 small showers per month that we have named microshowers. We shall operationally define a microshower as the minimal meteoric stream which can be detected with the Kazan meteoric radar while quasitomographic procedures of processing interferometer data are used. © Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005

SHAPE RECONSTRUCTION OF HERITAGE ASSETS BY POLARIZATION INFORMATION

Three-dimensional modeling of heritage assets poses a challenge when high reflectance and featureless surfaces are involved. Because of the complex reflection characteristics, traditional methods, either passive or active, tend to generate noisy and incomplete reconstruction results. To address this, we introduce in this paper a shape-from-polarization system and modeling strategy for the 3-D reconstruction of heritage assets. As demonstrated, by analyzing polarization properties of reflected light, we can generate by a single image pixel-level-resolution normal and depth maps. We consider two system prototypes involving a point light source but different in the polarizing camera configurations. They provide solutions for different reconstruction requirements and acquisition conditions. Our reconstruction model is common however to both involving a closed set of simple computation steps. Our evaluations demonstrate how the proposed method significantly improves the 3-D surface model completeness and level of detail, showing its suitability and value to reach the goal of a high-resolution survey of heritage assets, where traditional approaches tend to fail

Associations of meteor microshowers or as the Kazan radar "SEES" radiants on northern celestial hemisphere

The discrete quasitomographic method of the analysis of the interferometric data of meteor radar gives us the possibility of measuring coordinates and velocities of very weak meteor showers with a 2 × 2 square degree resolution on the celestial sphere. The minimal rate of the meteors in each microstream is five meteors per day. At such sensitivity, basic distinctions between irregularities of the sporadic background and meteor streams vanish. More than 1000 of the detected microshowers per month are associated with a combination of (a) the large known meteor showers, (b) the weaker known meteor showers and (c) till now unknown associations of microshowers. All microshowers regardless of association have the identical velocities, limited areas of radiation and near simultaneity of their acting dates. The results are compiled as maps of radiant distribution and average velocities of microstreams for different months. From these it is possible to see how the microshower activity for various discrete sites on the celestial sphere correlate with the behavior of the well-known meteor streams and thus to infer the orbital properties of the different microstream configurations. © Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005

Optical Telecommunications-Band Clock based on Neutral Titanium Atoms

We propose an optical clock based on narrow, spin-forbidden M1 and E2 transitions in laser-cooled neutral titanium. These transitions exhibit much smaller black body radiation shifts than those in alkaline earth atoms, small quadratic Zeeman shifts, and have wavelengths in the S, C, and L-bands of fiber-optic telecommunication standards, allowing for integration with robust laser technology. We calculate lifetimes; transition matrix elements; dynamic scalar, vector, and tensor polarizabilities; and black body radiation shifts of the clock transitions using a high-precision relativistic hybrid method that combines a configuration interaction and coupled cluster approaches. We also calculate the line strengths and branching ratios of the transitions used for laser cooling. To identify magic trapping wavelengths, we have completed the largest-to-date direct dynamical polarizability calculations. Finally, we identify new challenges that arise in precision measurements due to magnetic dipole-dipole interactions and describe an approach to overcome them. Direct access to a telecommunications-band atomic frequency standard will aid the deployment of optical clock networks and clock comparisons over long distances.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures main text; 8 pages, 3 figures supplementary tex

State-Insensitive Trapping of Alkaline-Earth Atoms in a Nanofiber-Based Optical Dipole Trap

Neutral atoms trapped in the evanescent optical potentials of nanotapered optical fibers are a promising platform for developing quantum technologies and exploring fundamental science, such as quantum networks and quantum electrodynamics. Building on the successful advancements with trapped alkali atoms, here we demonstrate a state-insensitive optical dipole trap for strontium-88, an alkaline-earth atom, using the evanescent fields of a nanotapered optical fiber. Leveraging the low laser-cooling temperatures of $\sim\!\!1~\mu$K readily achievable with strontium, we demonstrate trapping in record low trap depths corresponding to $\sim\!\!3~\mu$K. Further, employing a double magic wavelength trapping scheme, we realize state-insensitive trapping on the kilohertz-wide 5s^{2}\;^{1}\!S_{0}-5s5p\;^{3}\!P_{1,|m|=1} cooling transition, which we verify by performing near-surface high-resolution spectroscopy of the atomic transition. This allows us to experimentally find and verify the state insensitivity of the trap nearby a theoretically predicted magic wavelength of 435.827(25) nm. Given the non-magnetic ground state and low collisional scattering length of strontium-88, this work also lays the foundation for developing versatile and robust matter-wave atomtronic circuits over nanophotonic waveguides.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

Orbital structure of the meteor complex according to radar observations in Kazan. 1. Apparent distributions of aphelia

The results of an analysis of the orbital structure of the meteor complex accessible for radar observations at northern midlatitudes are reported. Experimentally, the study is based on the long-term monitoring of the influx of meteor matter into the Earth's atmosphere performed with the meteor radar of Kazan State University starting from 1986. The study uses a discrete quasi-tomographic method to measure the radiants and velocities of meteor showers based on goniometric data of the meteor radar and diffraction measurements of meteor velocities. The discretization of the detection environment-in particular, in terms of velocity-is shown to result in no substantial loss of measurement accuracy. The error of the measured velocity of the shower does not exceed 1.5 km/s for a standard deviation of a single velocity measurement equal to 3 km/s. Microshower representation is used with microshowers either representing the correlated part of the sporadic complex or being partial streams of major and minor showers, or fragments of the dust environment of minor bodies passing by Earth or falling onto it. The data of measurements made over the entire annual cycle are used to construct combined maps of the distribution of the observed 2263 microshowers (a total of 22 604 orbits) by their inclination, aphelion distance, and longitudes of the ascending nodes of their orbits. The observing conditions are shown to have a significant effect on the parameters of the distribution of aphelion distances for different months, and the corresponding distributions for prograde and retrograde orbits are shown to differ fundamentally. A specific feature of such distribution maps is that they allow uniform representation of both meteor showers and irregularities of the sporadic complex. © 2008 MAIK Nauka