Shape Sensing Project
Development of a new photonic sensor for the monitoring of critical structures
Critical infrastructures have been providing essential and irreplaceable services to society for a long time; however, in recent decades their proper functioning has been gaining importance.
Although nowadays, and increasingly, digitalization for the correct and optimal maintenance of these infrastructures is becoming a recurrent practice, there are still many critical assets that are still controlled manually and archaically, which entails risks for the safety of people and is in turn widely improvable in terms of efficiency and costs. Therefore, it is necessary to modernize the current critical infrastructure monitoring systems to help minimize the repeated accidents that the current manual system does not completely mitigate.
The objective of the Shape Sensing project is to develop a sensor that can track changes in the geometry of any critical asset, thus anticipating structural failures and minimizing the consequences and risks associated with these failures.
Shape Sensing will make it possible to obtain, continuously and in real time, the deformation of elements from centimeters to hundreds of meters in length.
Thus, the solution proposed by Calsens and Applus consists of an innovative sensor that will allow to obtain, continuously and in real time, the deformation of elements from centimeters to hundreds of meters in length. This device will be able to cover three types of applications: the detection and study of new deformations, the study of known deformations and the prediction of future effects caused by these deformations.
The initiative, in which secpho participates in the coordination and promotion, is funded by the support program for Innovative Business Groups of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism in the 2021 call, which aims to digitize the industry.
