Driving Burj Dubai Core Walls with an Advanced Data Fusion System.

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the construction of super high-rise buildings. From the prior art, various procedures and devices for surveys during and after the phase of erection of a high-rise building are known. High-rise buildings are subject to strong external tilt effects caused, for instance, by wind pressures, unilateral thermal effects by exposure to sunlight, and unilateral loads. Such effects are a particular challenge in the phase of construction of a high-rise building, in as much as the high-rise building under construction is also subject to tilt effects, and will at least temporarily lose its - as a rule exactly vertical - alignment. Yet construction should progress in such a way that the building is aligned as planned, and particularly so in the vertical, when returning into an un-tilted basic state.It is essential that a straight element be constructed that theoretically, even when moving around its design centre point due to varying loads, would have an exactly vertical alignment when all biasing conditions are neutralised. Because of differential raft settlement, differential concrete shortening, and construction tolerances, this ideal situation will rarely be achieved. This paper describes a procedure developed by the authors using GPS observations combined with a network of precision inclination sensor to provide reliable coordinated points at the top of the worldwide highest-rise building under construction in Dubai.