BACKGROUND
Location: Moscow, Russia
PIK—Russia’s largest homebuilder and construction company—planned to build an experimental, frameless panel 100-metre-tall apartment tower in Moscow. Historically, legal restrictions limited the height of frameless panel multi-storey buildings to 75 metres. Construction of Amurksy Park, the 100-metre-tall building complex would need to be carefully monitored to ensure that the calculations made during the planning stages held up on the job site.
OBJECTIVES
Because of the apartment building’s experimental nature, the client needed innovative monitoring techniques that would produce data to test and refine the mathematical model used in its design, as well as to alert the team to any potential stability problems before they occurred—all during construction. SODIS Lab wanted to gather strain data and present it online as soon as possible. During the project, the embedded sensors needed to be connected to the data collection system as quickly as possible, prior to construction of the next floor.
CHALLENGES
The client needed monitoring instruments that could be embedded in concrete slabs as they were being manufactured. This meant that the instruments had to stand up to having concrete poured around them, but also had to survive the two-month finishing process that the slabs underwent before installation on the job site. Any sensors used in the project also had to be able to integrate into SODIS Building M, SODIS Lab’s web-based data platform to provide stakeholders with the high-quality, remote data needed for the project.
SOLUTION
The contractors used RST vibrating wire strain gauges and MEMS biaxial tilt meters to provide them with the data they needed. They chose these instruments because of their reliability and rugged construction—when a sensor is buried inside a concrete slab, replacing a defective unit isn’t an option, and they needed to know they could trust their instrumentation. RST provided the instrumentation to collect quality data when the client was plying uncharted waters and, more than ever, had to get it right the first time.
BENEFITS
RST’s monitoring instruments’ durability and reliability were critical to the project. These factors, combined with RST’s technical support gave the client the confidence they needed in their monitoring equipment.
RESULTS
RST’s monitoring instruments were able to withstand the concrete slabs’ manufacturing process and provide the data needed to verify and refine the building’s design. Other types of sensor installations typically require longer to return data because of the
process of concrete stabilization
INSTRUMENTATION
36 VWSG-E Vibrating Wire Strain Gauges
20 IC6656 MEMS biaxial tilt meters
