Honcut Bridge (CALTRANS) Project
In November 2021 DarkPulse entered a pilot project in California to monitor the structural health of bridges and roadbeds with the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS). DarkPulse launched its BOTDA system into a the Honcut bridge construction located outside The City of Sacramento, California to monitor temperature changes of concrete in real-time ensuring proper curing has occurred. The system will remain in place where it will monitor the stress and strain of the bridge’s structures and roadbed. We anticipate installation into additional bridges as the pilot project expands across the State of California.
This is a monumental step for DarkPulse’s high resolution BOTDA systems as the first commercial deployment of the technology but also a giant leap forward in infrastructure structural safety” said Dennis O’Leary, Chairman and CEO of the DarkPulse. “With the recent approval of the Infrastructure Bill we believe the U.S. has begun its journey towards smart infrastructures which will lead toward smart cities,” he continued. “DarkPulse is positioning its system and capabilities as the foundational technology for smart cities which we believe is part of the larger science of Global System Dynamics
The project started with careful installation of the reinforced fibre along the distance of the pier, the fibre is manufactured to tailored length to give maximum coverage of the pier for stress, strain, and temperature measurement. Installation is quality checked and uses a special method of install to allow the cable to move along the length of the pier as it is lifted from the horizontal to vertical position.
The Rebar cage is analysed for the easiest cable routes with installation in the instance across the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock position of the pier diameter.
The pier is concreted in to “ground level”, from there the fibre optic transition cables are routed through the pier and cap to allow measurement data to be transitioned to a data highway and back to the Patented DarkPulse BOTDA device before information is converted to meaningful measurements to the customer, represented by the graphical user interface.
The team were present across the lifecycle of the install, including the lift phase, to work with the Principal Contractor to protect the install and make sure the pier is installed in the correct orientation to provide the most complete and comparative data across pier pairs and along the length of the bridge structure.
Systems can be deployed in both new and existing installations. In the example of the Honcut bridge, the team is working on a new install that will be in use alongside existing infrastructure. Should the client wish, the technology can be retrofitted to an install to provide complete safety coverage of the asset.
The DarkPulse team periodically check the install across phases, not only to gather information to assist the client of factors such as drying time and temperature across the pier bed, but also to check system operation. DarkPulse are committed to working with the customer to provide full life cycle data and bespoke requests for use of the system in dynamic, live situations.