Exterior deformation is one of the most important measurements for the safety management of embankment dams. Conventional survey methods, such as leveling and total station surveys, have been adopted for this purpose. However, these human-operated methods involve high labor costs in the long run. In addition, just after serious disasters, immediate surveys might be difficult and dangerous in some cases.
To overcome these problems, the authors have been promoting an automatized displacement monitoring method using the Global Positioning System (GPS), which monitors the three-dimensional displacements of multiple measurement points remotely and continuously. Although our previous studies proved its effectiveness, a problem has been revealed, namely, that normal GPS antennas, set at the dam crest, could not measure the deformation of the embankment core accurately.
Therefore, a new method has been developed in the present study for monitoring the core displacements using antennas, which are installed inside of the manhole at the dam crest. This paper describes the results of the performance tests of the proposed method and discusses the applicability for its practical use.
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