Horizontal Load Resistance of Ruined Walls, Case Study of a Hungarian Castle with the Aid of Laser

Abstract

The use of laser scanning technology for surveying historical buildings or ruins is gaining widespread popularity. While the “manual” surveying methods are time-consuming and provide just rough guess about the shape of the investigated complex building, the scanning process is very quick and the point cloud contains the “exact” geometry with the desired accuracy. This paper introduces a method, where by using the “exact” geometry of a ruined Hungarian castle, the stability of the remained walls is checked. With the aid of the point cloud an automated calculation process was developed, that defines the maximum wind load and earthquake ground acceleration as the limit load of the structures. The effect of geometrical precision was also investigated by varying the density of the point cloud.