| Summary: |
Nowadays, the searching for better performance and safety of structures, and the very limit budget assigned to the construction and maintenance of the civil infrastructures impose new responsibilities to designers, constructors and owners being mandatory to apply to new structural health monitoring systems.
These systems are based on the installation of optic or electric sensors connected to signal interrogation and transmission equipment, remote controlled, being the stored data base able to permanently inform the responsible entity about the structural integrity and maintenance condition of the infrastructure.
It is in this context that the present R&DT, improving the current practice that has been the acquaintanceship of the research unit LABEST/FEUP and NewMENSUS. LABEST/FEUP has a broad science curriculum in the area of structural health monitoring and has developed expertise in this area from several R&D projects funded by FCT. NewMENSUS is a spinoff of LABEST, and arose from a need identified in the construction industry of a more efficient response to design, development, installation and operation of monitoring systems for structures.
The present R&DT project consists essentially in three activity areas: (i) development and integration of new products (transducers) and processes in monitoring systems; (ii) development of software for data management and visualization, and software to support data analysis and interpretation; (iii) development of optic network solution to incorporate sensors and equipment in view of the adequate field implementation.
The measurement systems to be developed are essentially based on the fiber optic sensing technology, in which usage there is already a large experience of the team involved in the project. Within the first project activity it is going to be developed new industrial products, prototypes of transducers or systems that have been tested by LABEST and experimentally applied in bridges by NewMENSUS.
The gr  |
Summary
Nowadays, the searching for better performance and safety of structures, and the very limit budget assigned to the construction and maintenance of the civil infrastructures impose new responsibilities to designers, constructors and owners being mandatory to apply to new structural health monitoring systems.
These systems are based on the installation of optic or electric sensors connected to signal interrogation and transmission equipment, remote controlled, being the stored data base able to permanently inform the responsible entity about the structural integrity and maintenance condition of the infrastructure.
It is in this context that the present R&DT, improving the current practice that has been the acquaintanceship of the research unit LABEST/FEUP and NewMENSUS. LABEST/FEUP has a broad science curriculum in the area of structural health monitoring and has developed expertise in this area from several R&D projects funded by FCT. NewMENSUS is a spinoff of LABEST, and arose from a need identified in the construction industry of a more efficient response to design, development, installation and operation of monitoring systems for structures.
The present R&DT project consists essentially in three activity areas: (i) development and integration of new products (transducers) and processes in monitoring systems; (ii) development of software for data management and visualization, and software to support data analysis and interpretation; (iii) development of optic network solution to incorporate sensors and equipment in view of the adequate field implementation.
The measurement systems to be developed are essentially based on the fiber optic sensing technology, in which usage there is already a large experience of the team involved in the project. Within the first project activity it is going to be developed new industrial products, prototypes of transducers or systems that have been tested by LABEST and experimentally applied in bridges by NewMENSUS.
The great amount of data acquired and transmitted by the monitoring system needs the development of informatics tools for data management and post processing, including the establishment of surveillance and alert levels for critical structural parameters, is also obligatory.
The tasks associated to project activities involve extensive research and technological development and work that is particularly focused on consolidation of technologies where experience on application and products development already exist. Examples of research and technological development associated to the development of a new process of measurement in prestressing strands and cables stays for bridges and viaducts, using fiber optic sensors, and results treatment of the displacement measuring using GNSS and its applicability to the study of systems for monitoring of structures. Examples of work-generating products and processes, related to the development of the displacement transducer for measuring bridges displacements, with a patent owned by UPorto, or the development of software for interpretation of measurement data, with some routines already developed in LABEST.
The assignment of tasks to co-promoters reflects this distribution: for LABEST/FEUP primarily the tasks in the R&D assume a greater importance, for NewMENSUS all jobs that are more directly related to the generation of processes and products to be tested and developed, directly applicable to the works. |