BIM-based scheduling for precast assembly and tower crane lifting

• Main Author: Huang, Lihui
• Other Authors: Cai Yiyu
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Civil engineering::Construction management; Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Robots
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/152250
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the increasing popularity of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the building and construction industry worldwide and the development of the precast industry, three issues have become significant. The first one is the path planning of the tower crane lifting of heavy precast. It is crucial to determine how to lift the precast that becomes larger and heavier. Lifting not being properly planned can cause safety issues even accidents. Good lift planning, on the other hand, can improve productivity. The second issue is the precast installation/assembly sequence. Improper installation sequence may lead to undo and redo undesired work for lifting and assembling of precast components. The third one is related to the dynamic nature of the real construction environment. It is necessary to capture the changing real environment in the lifting and assembly processes. Tower cranes are common tools used in the construction industry. To improve the safety and productivity of the lifting work, we develop an intelligent tower crane lifting path planner based on the Master-Slave Parallel Genetic Algorithm and take advantage of the remarkable computational power of the Graphics Processing Unit parallelism to generate the lifting path in almost real-time. To address the issue of installation sequence, we propose an algorithm to optimize precast installation sequence considering four factors, including the layout interference, crane lifting path, weight, and occupied space of precast. Traditionally, path planning for tower crane lifting and installation sequencing of precast are treated as two separate issues. We propose a novel approach to combining them two-in-one to achieve a cost-effective and comprehensive solution by considering crane lifting paths in the assembly sequence optimization. To deal with the dynamic environment changes in a construction site and therefore ensure the accuracy of lifting paths produced by the automatic path planning system, we capture the real environment through 3D laser scanning. This approach can save a lot of labor and time. It can also be employed to digitize the complex real environment that either is very hard to build or has no existing 3D models for the automatic lift path planning system.