Bureau of Reclamation, USACE partner for composite structure monitoring challenge

The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation, Washington, D.C., U.S.), the nation’s largest wholesale water supplier, in partnership with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE, Washington, D.C.) and HeroX (Vancouver, Canada), a crowdsourcing platform, announced on March 4 the crowdsourcing competition “The Imperfection Detection Challenge.” The challenge calls on the global community to design portable devices for field assessment of composite structures. The goal is to eventually develop prototypes that can rapidly detect and quantify defects of interest, and are portable, rugged and easily used in field settings.

Use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials for federal civil infrastructure is an ongoing project at both Reclamation and USACE in applications such as pipelines, tanks and other specialized equipment, which take advantage of the material’s corrosion resistance, light weight and other helpful properties. However, as composites age in various infrastructure applications, reliable methods of assessing their condition in the field are needed. The goal of the crowdsourcing challenge, therefore, is to develop portable tools that use non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods to assess the condition of existing FRP composite structures.

“To help maintain America’s water infrastructure, Reclamation wishes to advance its field assessment capabilities of composites structures, and we have the community that can help do this,” says Christian Cotichini, CEO, HeroX. “Reclamation needs portable technology to reliably and non-destructively evaluate their composite structures in the field. Because HeroX can tap into such a far-reaching and diverse pool of problem solvers, there is no shortage of creative solutions at our fingertips, even for niche problems such as this one.”

The Imperfection Detection Challenge is a three-phase challenge, with a total prize of $380,000. Participants will have the opportunity to build prototype devices and have their prototypes’ performance verified in government laboratories. In addition to the prize money, winners will have access to subject matter experts from both Reclamation and USACE, as well as access to potential commercial partners.

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