Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--When Mississippi State researchers start exciting concrete, you can bet they're up to something good.
That's because a new invention by engineers at the university's Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analysis Laboratory--DIAL--generates enough excitement to test the structural integrity of bridges and other things made of concrete.
The Automatic Chain Drag System--formerly called Hollow Deck--was developed several years ago by DIAL as a portable monitor for ensuring the safety of concrete bridge decks. Since then, it's been tested thoroughly by the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
Now, the three-wheel, walk-behind device that looks something like a baby carriage, is being licensed to Excelerate Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., which has acquired worldwide rights to commercialize the MSU-patented technology.
"Excelerate is looking forward to working with MSU in moving the acoustic detection of concrete delaminations (splitting apart) out of the laboratory and into a viable and cost-effective product for both domestic and international applications," said Mike Doubleday, the company's president and chief executive officer.
The licensing agreement with MSU's Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing office was finalized in July. MSU will share in the royalties.
"This is one of more than 40 active licenses and 60 patents that MSU currently holds," noted IPTL director Charles Rivenburgh.
DIAL deputy director Charlie Waggoner called Excelerate "an ideal partner to bring this technology to the marketplace.
"The ACDS can dramatically reduce the time required to inspect bridges, increase the accuracy of inspections, and make our nation's highway infrastructure safer," he added. "We anticipate this device will change the 'state-of-the-art' for conducting periodic inspection of bridges, nationally and internationally."
The invention "excites" the structure to be inspected with a chain, recording resulting vibrations with an acoustical sensor, or microphone, which is housed in the carriage. Signals from the sensor are processed to filter out unnecessary frequencies and pinpoint the presence of structural defects, providing a computer-generated "virtual map" of the bridge subsurface.
Waggoner predicted the device will give state and federal transportation departments "a rapid analytical technique they can use routinely to evaluate the condition of bridge decks.
"This increase in speed and accuracy, along with a reduction in costs, will provide information necessary to optimize use of highway department resources for bridge maintenance," the DIAL administrator and associate research professor continued.
DIAL, headed by interim director Roger King, is a research arm of MSU's Bagley College of Engineering, which is led by Dean Kirk Schulz.
Former DIAL researchers Mark Henderson and Gary Dion worked with Dan Costley, then an acoustics investigator for Miltec Inc. in Oxford, to develop the system that first was unveiled in 1999. Together, they refined the system's data-collecting capabilities.
"Concrete bridges are constructed with a mesh of reinforced steel within the deck," Henderson explained in an earlier interview. "Over time, water and other corrosive agents can cause the steel to deteriorate.
"When this happens, portions of the bridge may separate into layers and eventually lead to problems ranging from an annoying pothole to serious structural damage," added Henderson, who said federal and state laws require the nation's approximately 500,000 bridges to be inspected at least once every two years.
Ground-penetrating radar and other high-tech equipment can be used to check for structural problems in bridges, but these methods are expensive and time-consuming. The DIAL system takes the time-honored technique of detecting structural separations by dragging a metal chain across the concrete, and wheels it into the 21st century.
"DIAL is developing innovative solutions to some of today's most pressing problems involving energy, the environment, infrastructure and industrial processes," said Colin Scanes, MSU's vice president for research. "The lab is working with nearly 50 companies in Mississippi and the rest of the nation."
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact DIAL's Dr. Waggoner at (662) 325-7601 or waggnoer@dial.msstate.edu; or Chase Kasper at 325-1939 or ckasper@research.msstate.edu.
Mike Doubleday of Excelerate can be reached at (256) 508-4364 or mike@excelerate-inc.com.