Quay Wall Monitoring in Amsterdam
At Recht Boomssloot in Amsterdam, the team measured how a masonry quay wall responds to vibration from across the canal. Q1 Laser RADAR recorded the wall’s motion alongside reference accelerometers.
Both measurement systems picked up the same main sideways mode.
Why quay walls are difficult to monitor
These walls sit at the intersection of masonry, timber foundations, soil and water. Their movement is subtle, and their length makes it hard to separate local response from the movement of the whole structure.
1,700+ km of quay walls
Across the Netherlands, construction, loading and foundation conditions vary from one wall to the next.
128 parallel measurement channels
Q1 observed a 12 m line beneath the capstone from the opposite side of the canal.
Ambient and hammer tests
Laser RADAR and accelerometers recorded the wall’s response side by side.
The field test
The team worked on a masonry wall at Recht Boomssloot. They ran ambient and hammer tests with two accelerometer layouts while Q1 watched from the opposite bank. Q1 acquired phasor data at 40 kHz, which was converted to velocity time series for modal analysis.
What stand-off laser vibrometry offers
Contact sensors remain useful, but mounting and cabling them across masonry takes time and access. In this test, Ommatidia Q1 Laser RADAR measured many points from the opposite bank, in line with the survey area. Mounted on a vehicle, the same approach can support extended measurement campaigns along a canal or corridor—without the cost and complexity of a fixed installation.
Stand-off access
Set up from the opposite side of the canal, with no sensors mounted across the wall face.
A broader view
Parallel channels reveal how the response changes along the measured line.
Vehicle-mounted campaigns
Vehicle-mounted measurement makes it practical to cover more of the network while keeping set-up light.
Measurement layout
The drawing shows the wall sections, accelerometer positions and hammer location used during the test. It allowed the team to compare contact measurements with Q1’s parallel laser-radar data.
Amsterdam’s seventeenth-century canal ring is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That setting makes access and monitoring choices especially important. Download the field report.
What we found
Both systems identified the same sideways mode in the ambient and hammer-test data. Higher vertical modes appeared in the hammer tests. The result gives teams a practical starting point for vibration monitoring on canal infrastructure. For related work, see our guide to non-contact vibration measurement.
Plan your quay-wall survey
Ommatidia helps infrastructure teams plan the measurement geometry, stand-off position and sampling needed for a useful site survey. The aim is clear data that can inform the next engineering decision.
