While destructive methods of monitoring a load bearing structure might still tell you how much weight it can handle, this bridge would still be a bridge if its engineer had chosen a non-destructive monitoring method.
Tech Blog Thursday is an original monthly blog series that mixes serious science with humor and easily recognizable analogies for the less-than-scientifically inclined. The purpose of this blog series is to illustrate the potential of not-yet-commercialized technology and encourage excitement about the possibilities.
Our great-great-great-great grandparents had their own way to stress-test structures like bridges and other architectural elements: “bend something until it breaks, then don’t put so much weight on it next time.” Fortunately, we’ve discovered more accurate methods of measurement since.
Today, stress testing has evolved to high tech measures that, well… gauge how much of a beating a structure can take before it reaches its breaking point. Modern techniques, like a patent-pending method from UCF researchers that relies on luminescent particles, provide data to manufacturers and governments who want to predict how much weight, pressure, and stress a structure can endure.
Instead of conventional, often more destructive options for stress-testing (bend-it-until-it-breaks), this invention, Stress-Sensing Material and Methods , uses a non-destructive type of spectroscopy to provide researchers with information about potential weak spots. Luminescent particles embedded in an adhesive matrix provide real-time, highly detailed information about where voids, agglomeration, cracks, or inclusions might cause structural failure.
When used as an adhesive (glue) or as a surface coating (paint), the matrix’s photoluminescent particles enable piezospectroscopic testing. With this method, airplane wings, bridges, and other modern marvels that rely on the fundamentals of aerospace and civil engineering can be evaluated to predict how and when a structure might fail. This is the first step to making the structure safe and lasting.
The science behind this high-tech glow paint, piezospectroscopy, is a branch off of spectroscopy: the analysis of the interaction of matter and radiated energy.
Spectroscopy can be used to determine the elements in a sample by measuring the energy they emit after being “riled up” by a source such as a laser that sends their valence electrons outward. The electrons later “fall” back into place and release the extra jolt of energy in the process. This is the signature that gives a researcher clues to what element is what.
In piezospectroscopy, the luminescent particles vary based on the amount of stress in each part of a structure carrying a load (like a bridge) or experiencing other stress (like an airplane wing). With this information, researchers can tell where it might be experiencing too much stress. This can be because of a defect, a design flaw, or when the structure nears the limit of how much pressure it can withstand before failure.
When you’re stuck in traffic on a bridge packed with semi-trucks and SUVs, you’re probably hoping that the Department of Transportation invested in a non-destructive stress-sensing material. When your flight to Hawaii—with six hours over an ocean up to 10,000 miles deep—encounters turbulence, you might feel safer in a plane with wings vetted in a wind tunnel by lasers.
Until this is commercialized, the bridges and planes you rely on are developed and tested with less than the latest technology available.
And shouldn’t the Golden Gate Bridge really glow?
For more information on this shining example of the many technologies available for licensing from UCF, visit the Technology Locator.
>>Written by Lisa Bottomley
The post Testing Structures for Safety with a Technology that Shines in More than One Way appeared first on Technology Transfer.