Permanent Condition Monitoring at the Push of a Button

Ageing infrastructure systems pose great challenges for us to accommodate both, technical progress and steadily rising mobility. Requirements for technical safety of infrastructure and traffic constructions can only be fulfilled by reliable condition monitoring and assessment.

Accidents of a devastating extent can be avoided by a permanent condition monitoring allowing for a timely condition assessment, since manual inspections are time-consuming and often performed too late. Next to bridges, examples include the safety of cableways, the requirements in power plant engineering and chemical industry, as well as high-rise masts and traffic lights in the city center. In these areas, incidents due to material aging and corrosion have already become known.

Modular, energy self-sufficient, and cost-efficient infrastructure monitoring systems

Scientists and engineers of Fraunhofer IZFP in Saarbrücken, Germany, have developed a system for the easy and cost-efficient implementation of necessary prerequisites of a steady, modular, and cost-efficient infrastructure monitoring – as simple as pushing a button. Expensive and maintenance-intensive server networks – often prone to hacker attacks – and interference-prone systems which require periodic maintenance:

All of this might soon be a thing of the past. “By individual sensor interfaces the modular, low-power measurement system MoniDAQ allows for a tailor-made solution of any inspection task. Time-consuming, randomized inspections become decrepit by our innovation. And this all can be easily read out locally via radio interface”, Sargon Youssef, scientist and engineer of Fraunhofer IZFP, explains.

Miniaturized sensors steadily searching for cracks and alterations in the fabric

Minute sensors, permanently attached to an infrastructure of interest, detect even the tiniest alterations in the fabric. A single MoniDAQ unit contains, amongst others, a long-term data memory which can be read out via radio interface at any time, thus, providing the basis for an extensive condition assessment of the construction.

A MoniDAQ unit shall keep its functionality over a period of 10 years without any need for maintenance or replacement. To this each unit contains a long-term power supply by a renewable, forever available energy source. All necessary nondestructive testing procedures for this novel monitoring system will be adapted and made suitable for series production by Fraunhofer IZFP itself. From January 16 to 21, 2017, the researchers will present their smart new development at BAU fair in Munich (hall C2.538).

http://www.izfp.fraunhofer.de/en.html