BUILT CoLAB is one of the participants in the INTENT project – Intelligent health monitoring of road infrastructures using bender elements embedded in pavements.
INTENT is a project funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) that aims to investigate the use of Bender Elements to monitor the condition of pavements.
Currently, most pavement monitoring solutions are based on periodic inspections of the condition of the wearing course. However, the pavement foundation (subgrade, capping, sub-base) and the granular layer are essential components of the road structure. Failures in the base layer will inevitably jeopardise the pavement and become much more difficult to detect visually along the wear layer, which is usually bituminous. That’s why INTENT aims to monitor this foundation layer using an innovative technology based on piezoelectric sensors, the Bender Elements.
BUILT CoLAB will focus most of its intervention on activity 4, which aims to develop the necessary conditions for the tests to be carried out in a real environment. To this end, it will develop the architecture, software and technical experimental protocols for data acquisition. BUILT CoLAB also liaises with Mota Engil, its associate, which will support the experiment in a real environment.
