New Sensors Prevent Building Collapse

New Sensors Prevent Building Collapse

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Illustration photo (Wikimedia Commons)
Illustration photo (Wikimedia Commons)

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will be part of an international team of engineers from universities in the United States, Canada, and Qatar developing a novel system to detect the onset of structural damage on bridges, stadiums, and other large public infrastructure.

According to HLS News Wire with a grant of just over $1 million from the government of Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has proposed building one of the longest causeways in the world, the three-member team is developing a wireless sensor network which will monitor vibrations, sagging, and stresses to assess a structure’s ability to carry its load. An NJIT release reports that the proposed system would not only detect damage after it occurs, but would aim to predict it before it takes place.

Our part of this project is to determine not only where to place the sensors, but to decide what type of data the system will collect, how to interpret it, and then how to make a decision about where, when, and to what extent to intervene,” said Mohamed Mahgoub, director of NJIT’s Concrete Industry Management (CIM) program and one of the project’s principal investigators.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

The system would alert bridge engineers in real-time to potentially catastrophic structural failures or weaknesses, while also guiding periodic preventive maintenance.

While the network can be installed on existing bridges, the aim is to embed it in a structure’s steel bars before the concrete is even poured,” Mahgoub said.

These safety measures are an important consideration for Qatar, which is gearing up to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and is planning a massive complex of bridges, stadiums, tramways, and tunnels in preparation for it. Meanwhile, proposals to connect to Bahrain by a 25-mile causeway have been under active discussion for the past decade.