The Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) system has become a prominent tool in structural health monitoring. Among such systems, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is a potential technology for the acquisition of three-dimensional (3D) information to assess structural health conditions. This paper enhances the application of TLS to damage detection and shape change analysis for structural element specimens. Specifically, estimating the deflection of a structural element with the aid of a Lidar system is introduced in this study. The proposed approach was validated by an indoor experiment by inducing artificial deflection on a simply supported beam. A robust genetic algorithm method is utilized to enhance the accuracy level of measuring deflection using lidar data. The proposed research primarily covers robust optimization of a genetic algorithm control parameter using the Taguchi experiment design. Once the acquired data is defined in terms of plane, which has minimum error, using a genetic algorithm and the deflection of the specimen can be extracted from the shape change analysis.
Keywords: curve fitting; deflection; genetic algorithm (GA); point cloud; terrestrial laser scanning (TLS).