Infrastructure

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Monitoring of civil infrastructure such as bridges and buildings is critical to the long-term operational cost and safety of aging structures. Knowledge of a structure's health, load bearing capacity, and predictive remaining life are the essential elements of the broad market term, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Bridges have become a high profile target for SHM solutions because they constitute the most vulnerable element of the transportation infrastructure. In recent publications the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has reported that nearly 30 percent of the country's 590,000 bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, in terms of dimensions, load or other characteristics. In addition, many of these bridges are small and medium span structures and are in rural locations. The FHWA claims that two main reasons for the deterioration of the infrastructure are aging combined with the significant increase in traffic levels. This is resulting in growing liabilities from wear and tear on many bridges beyond the levels that they were designed to handle.

AlphaSTAR's physics based virtual simulation capabilities represent significant applicability to many of the core challenges facing structural health monitoring. Using AlphaSTAR's definition, SHM includes monitoring, diagnosis, prognostication, repair, and inspection. For over five years, AlphaSTAR has teamed with academic, government, and industry leaders to pioneer an SHM solution. The first utilization of the solution was a combined effort with the University of California (UCI) when the US Army awarded a multi-year contract to expand and upgrade their web based hardware-software online Diagnostic Prognostic System (DPS) and Real Time Intelligent Field Repair for structural evaluation of the Composite Army Bridge (CAB). The SHM research for the CAB has since evolved into a complete offering now commercially available from AlphaSTAR including an industry leading wireless sensor network solution.