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Long-term deflection monitoring of a heritage, timber truss structure, and development of an integrated emergency alarm program

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Abstract

Constructed during WWII, Hangar 1 is one of five identical, timber Warren truss structures located at Canadian Forces Base St-Jean. Currently, the Department of National Defence has arbitrarily mandated that these heritage structures (base/province-wide) be evacuated during excessive snow events exceeding 10 cm due to potential serviceability and/or structural capacity issues. An automatic total station, as part of a larger Structural Health Monitoring program, was installed to capture three-dimensional deflections at 18 locations throughout the structure continuously, in real-time, to develop a staged decision-making process, serve as an early warning system (if evacuations are indeed warranted), and to confirm that it is an effective monitoring solution in the long-term. The ATS observed maximum member deflections, far below calculated limits, during a 35 cm snow load event, thus revealing that the evacuations are unwarranted based on the prescribed evacuation criteria. Thus, it is hypothesized that observed damages and poor building performance are due to other factors that require further investigations. Overall, the ATS was effective in a long-term, real-time, timber-monitoring program designed for knowledge and emergency purposes, as alert notifications were successfully sent to building occupants. The design/implementation of the integrated staged alarm system, highlighted capabilities/limitations of the ATS, and future considerations for employing an ATS in similar long-term timber monitoring projects involving heritage structures are thoroughly presented within this paper.

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Data availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by the RMC Green Team and the Department of National Defence. The authors would also like to acknowledge the personal contributions of Mr. Dexter Gaskin, Mr. John Shaw, Mr. Steve Vanvolkingburgh and Mr. Adam Watson for their technical advice and assistance throughout the project as well as the personnel at Real Property Operations (Quebec) and CFB St Jean for their ongoing support and efforts concerning this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RMC Green Team, Department of Civil Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, 13 General Crerar Crescent, Station Forces, P.O. Box 17000, Kingston, ON, K7K 7B4, Canada

    Henry Helmer-Smith, Marc-André Dagenais & Nicholas Vlachopoulos

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  1. Henry Helmer-Smith
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  2. Marc-André Dagenais
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  3. Nicholas Vlachopoulos
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by HHS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by HHS and all authors commented on subsequent versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Henry Helmer-Smith.

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Helmer-Smith, H., Dagenais, MA. & Vlachopoulos, N. Long-term deflection monitoring of a heritage, timber truss structure, and development of an integrated emergency alarm program. J Civil Struct Health Monit 13, 1023–1041 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-023-00689-2

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