Innovation, made in Italy fiber optic system controls motorways, bridges and aqueducts

Artificial intelligence and optical fibers for a new hyper-tech system entirely made in Italy capable of ‘controlling’ the state of health of roads, highways and bridges, but not only. The new ‘Of’ system that uses fiber optic sensing technology can also ‘X-ray’ dams, aqueducts, America’s Cup sails and the Formula 1 single-seater. “By the end of the year, weather permitting, we will have 43 works completed distributed over more than 500 kilometers of the Italian road-motorway network under constant monitoring “, the engineer Paolo Persi del Marmo, CEO of Ntsg, who invented and patented the Of-Optical Fiber system, making the Italian company the only one in Europe capable of making 2D and 3D deformation measurements. The monitoring system is able to detect and measure deformations in 2D and 3D of an object of any shape and of a rigid or semi-rigid nature using sensitive optical fibers and currently the Of system has been installed on about 10 kilometers of roads-highways and in terms of the monitored area, it involves different Italian regions including Emilia Romagna, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, Tuscany, Lombardy and nearly 30,000 meters of fiber optic cable and about 1,000 sensors connected were used for the works carried out and in the completion phase. “We count 48 contracts awarded against a forecast of 20, we have an order book 20% higher than forecasts” underlines the CEO of Ntsg. The ‘Of-Optical Fiber patent is based on the use of optical fiber to measure the stress state and other physical-chemical, mechanical and structural parameters of artifacts belonging to multiple fields of engineering: bridges, viaducts, buildings, tracks, wagons, water pipes, sewer pipes, oil and gas pipelines, electricity distribution networks, wind turbines, cable cars, cables, automotive, other. “If today, and in the near future, motorists will be able to feel safer while traveling, it is thanks to an innovative fiber optic system, the patent of which is Italian and belongs to Ntsg” explains the entrepreneur. “Safety on roads, bridges and tunnels is increasingly topical and is only possible thanks to systems that guarantee continuous monitoring. The monitoring is of an infrastructural type, ie it detects the vertical and transverse deformation of each span, the displacement and rotation measurements of the piles, shoulders and supports of the bridges, to determine the modes of vibrations of the work “highlights Persi del Marmo, a Roman, 46 years old, electronic engineer and doctorate in aerospace engineering, was also part of the team that confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons on Titan, Saturn’s moon explored by the Huygens probe in the Cassini mission, carried out by NASA, ESA and ASI