Winnipeg Free Press, Friday, August 1, 2003

By Helen Fallding


WINNIPEG'S pioneering smart bridges could lead the way to smart airplanes, dams, pipelines, buildings, wind turbines and ships.

Electronics to read fibre optic stress sensors embedded in local bridges could also bring international fame and fortune to the Winnipeg company that unveiled a new system yesterday in Headingley.

Under a canopy on the banks of the Assiniboine River, IDERS showed a crowd of industry and government engineers the precise strains inside the Taylor Bridge when a semi-trailer barrels across.

IDERS will try to sell the same technology to some of the world's biggest companies at the product's official launch in California this fall.

The system that is expected to save Manitoba Highways money by quickly letting crews know when repairs are needed could some day prevent plane crashes by identifying internal weaknesses in new composite materials.

IDERS' 10-kilogram box of sophisticated electronics is a major step toward commercializing the sensing technology that academics with a University of Manitoba-based research network have been developing for years.

Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures president Aftab Mufti is proud a high-tech product that could eventually spread around the globe was developed in Winnipeg. "It will give us a high profile."

"There are possibilities for sure," said CN railway bridge engineer Hoat Le after travelling from Edmonton to watch the test run. "I would have to find out a lot more detail."

IDERS is also talking to Boeing and to Manitoba Hydro, which could incorporate the technology into new dams and wind turbines -- or even the new company headquarters to be built in downtown Winnipeg.

The insurance industry in Europe is already demanding that wind turbines be replaced every five years unless engineers can prove they are safe, IDERS president Bradley Brown said.

The company, which employs about 25 people, was formed in 1991 to design electronic payment pinpads for CIBC. Staffed largely by University of Manitoba engineering grads, it is moving into the university's Smartpark this year as it prepares to double in size.

ISIS had been reading data collected from stress sensors in the Taylor Bridge from an old computer in a room under the bridge. But that system required lots of maintenance and wasn't up to the brutal realities of Manitoba temperatures, which range from -30 C to 35 C.

IDERS took on the challenge of putting the electronics together in a simple box showing stress levels on a graph that can be read via the Internet. Its system takes 200 readings a second rather than the one per second ISIS was working with.

The new product will be formally launched at an international workshop at Stanford University sponsored by the likes of Airbus, DaimlerChrysler and U.S. Defence.

The new field of structural health monitoring is just getting off the ground and IDERS believes its system is the cheapest and most advanced. It could be another three to five years before it catches on.

The unassuming grey boxes cost $25,000 to $100,000, depending on the application, but that's minor compared to the cost of megaprojects likely to use them. The box can be moved from site to site and plugged in wherever it is needed.

The system -- which cost more than $1 million to develop -- will be tested next at a nuclear power plant in Pickering, Ont.
"It has very, very broad applications," said Wardrop Engineering's Doug Stewart, which installed a sensing system in the new Provencher Bridge.

Airplanes -- where invisible damage can mean lost lives -- are among the most promising applications.

Real-time readings from some of the structures ISIS monitors are available on the research network's Web site: www.isiscanada.com/lowres.htm

The most popular stress sensors are on the Golden Boy statue at the top of the Manitoba Legislative Building. ISIS president Aftab Mufti said he gets e-mail from people as far away as Europe and Japan who like to watch how the graphs change when the statue is buffeted by Winnipeg winds.

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