Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Spot-R By Triax, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Triax’s Spot-r system was developed to tackle the construction industry’s unique safety and productivity challenges, stemming from a demonstrated lack of total jobsite visibility and automatically collected, easily accessible field data. Spot-r by Triax combines a proprietary mesh network with sensor technology to record and transmit previously unattainable workforce and equipment location, activity and safety data within a defined area – all in real-time.

The Spot-r network is installed around the site and operates in a 900 MHz network, with a subset using a cellular connection to forward Spot-r sensor data to Triax’s custom, cloud dashboard. In the hazardous construction …

Mdp (Machine Drive Power) Intelligent Compaction Technology, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Caterpillar developed MDP (Machine Drive Power) technology to fill this gap. Rather than an accelerometer and vibratory drum, it uses the principle of rolling resistance to provide indications of soil stiffness. This allows it to perform more reliably on cohesive and granular soils with less variability than accelerometer systems. It also means that the technology can be used on both vibratory and static drum compactors, which are often used on larger sites. While the technology is quite useful on its own, it is even better as a complementary technology to the existing accelerometer-based systems. Contractors who use vibratory soil compactors …

Purdue’S Biowall, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Mechanical ventilation, energy recovery ventilation, and infiltration (air that leaks into a building) are commonly used to introduce fresh air. These are all valid approaches, but a living plant-based filter is an innovative complement to these traditional technologies. A Biowall has the potential to improve indoor air quality while reducing the quantity of air needed for ventilation, creating the potential for energy savings. Figure 1 shows a Biowall prototype being evaluated in the ReNEWW House, a research home located near the Purdue University campus (http://www.renewwhouse.com/).

Datumate, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Datumate is digitally transforming civil engineering processes used in construction, surveying and infrastructure inspection markets with fully automated, highly precise, cost effective and safe tools. It utilizes state-of-the-art image processing and advanced drones and camera technologies dramatically reducing the amount of time surveying crews spend in the field, speeding up construction progress checks and shortening infrastructure inspection duration, while maintaining survey grade accuracy. The intuitive, simple and automated solutions increase productivity by saving field and office time in civil engineering and inspection projects of roads, intersections, stockpile volumes, topography, piping, industrial facilities, bridges, property surveys, building facades, railways, cellular infrastructure …

Technology To Manufacture Oriented Pvc (Pvc-O) Pipes, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The development of Molecor´s technology, which is based on the application of a Molecular Orientation process, has delivered a significant turning point in the pipelines sector. With this technological development, the company has begun to manufacture TOM® PVC-O pipes, the most eco-friendly pipes on the market. The Molecor technology enabled eradicating many of the existing disadvantages of thermoplastic pipes.

This technology delivers a clear objective; to provide the water industry with a solution for pipes carrying pressurized water in an environmentally friendly, yet cost efficient manner. This also extends a service life compared to pipeline materials currently in use.

The …

Netpoint®, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The vast majority of construction scheduling software uses a combination of spreadsheets and Gantt charts for developing and depicting Critical Path Method (CPM) schedules. While this paradigm works for the expert scheduler, it is not conducive to collaboration, and it is prohibitively difficult for non-scheduling experts to understand.

NetPoint® provides a dynamic, visual interface conducive to touch and gestural input. Activities are drawn directly on a time-scale and may be placed on the same row or arranged automatically using codes or the WBS. Such control of the presentation makes it easier to communicate the plan to any type of audience. …

Fluid Isolator, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The reliability of concrete infrastructure is vital to ensuring daily life, as well as commerce, can progress without interruption. From the pavement of interstate highways to the driveways and sidewalks in a local neighborhood, concrete is expensive to install and often even more expensive, and intrusive, when it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, to maintain functionality in winter climates concrete is heavily exposed to deicing salts. This not only affects the roads, driveways, and sidewalks where salt is applied directly, but many other areas such as parking and residential garages where vehicles (and people) will track salt along with water …

Smartvid.Io, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The collection, organization, and retrieval of industrial media is a pervasive challenge that is especially glaring for companies in the AEC industry. Construction projects often generate large volumes of pictures & videos from the field for tracking progress and communicating between engineers, contractors, and subcontractors. It is not uncommon for field personnel to capture hundreds of photos per week on any given jobsite.

Smartvid.io is a cloud-based software solution designed for the specific needs of industrial media. The application’s internal deep-learning engines, collectively nicknamed VINNIE (for ‘Very Intelligent Neural Network for Insight and Evaluation’), use speech and image recognition to …

Hillman Composite Beam (Hcb®), Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The Hillman-Composite Beam (HCB®), is an innovative structural member for use in highway and railroad bridges as well as marine facilities. The HCB is essentially a lightweight reinforced concrete beam strengthened and protected by a corrosion-resistant and resilient Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shell.

The beam is comprised of three main components, a concrete arch (compression reinforcement), an FRP bottom flange encapsulating steel strands tying the ends of the arch together (tension reinforcement) and the FRP shell. Galvanized Rebar “shear connectors” are used to make the beam composite with the concrete deck in the same manner as pre-stressed concrete beams.

The …

Industrial-Grade Monitoring Solution: Hoistcam, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Safety and productivity are top priorities for contractors and industrial operations. Improving either makes a company more profitable and competitive. Technology advancements that can do both are important for every company to consider. HoistCam^TM industrial-grade video monitoring solutions can improve employees’ productivity and workplace safety in the construction industries. HoistCam also improves efficiency of operations and reduces job site accidents resulting in substantial cost savings to a contractor.

HoistCam™ is an integrated, wireless video system. The use of HoistCam eliminates blind lifts, blind spots and can share the live video with anyone, anywhere with solid security and easy control. …

Purdue Ect Report - Fourth Quarter 2016, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Fourth Quarter 2016

This is a quarterly report from the Purdue ECT.

Road Zipper™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Construction work zones are growing in number around the world. The natural aging of existing roadway infrastructure ensures that more and more maintenance and rehabilitation will be required. Work zones, by their very definition, create two major problems that must be addressed in some way: safety and mobility. In the United States, highway work zones are responsible for almost 25% of all non-recurring congestion and 10% of overall congestion. Vehicle accidents are more common in work zones, and traffic congestion through work zones on urban arterials and freeways is often considered to be “unavoidable." To address these issues, ROAD ZIPPER™ …

Lucidpipe™ Power System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

In most gravity fed water transmission pipelines, it is desired to reduce excess pressure head to prevent undue strain on a pipeline and lower the incidence of leaks. Normally this is done with pressure reducing valves that essentially burn off this excess pressure as heat. The LucidPipe™ system converts it to low cost electricity thereby removing unwanted pressure and generating energy at the same time - energy that can be put used behind the grid or put back on the grid. The LucidPipe™ system extracts a small percentage of pressure head providing nearly invisible operation allowing water operators to fulfill …