CII Research Laboratories

System and Process Assessment Research (SPAR) Laboratory

Directed by Dr. Genda Chen, Professor and Robert W. Abbett Distinguished Chair in Civil Engineering, the SPAR Lab provides unique capability of exploring foundational and use-inspired solutions to aging infrastructure problems, supporting conceptualization, development, experimentation, calibration, and implementation of key measurement technologies towards the development of enterprise digital twins for asset management.

The Lab pioneers “lab-on-a-sensor” designs, engineering-driven machine learning, and adaptive wavelet transform applications to address a multitude of assessment and maintenance issues we face today both nationally and internationally. To date, the Lab produced over 500 research products including six patents, helping translate research results into practices.

The equipment in the SPAR Lab is particularly useful in condition assessment of structural and mechanical systems, including bridges, culverts, offshore platforms, pipelines, ports, roads, and tunnels; chemical plants and nuclear plants; and other civil and power infrastructure.

 

The SPAR Lab features the following specialized equipment:

  • A distributed strain and temperature measurement system (up to 25 km in distance) based on the Brillouin and Rayleigh scatterings of light as it propagates through a single-mode optical fiber,
  • An ultra-high sensitivity and high frequency response acoustic sensing system (up to 1 km in distance) using an optical fiber with a distributed air and mechanical amplifier for acoustic wave,
  • A complete line of the development, fabrication, calibration, analysis, and application of grating-based fiber optic sensors, including the home-integrated CO2 laser based automated sensor fabrication system fully computer-controlled with in situ monitoring capability,
  • A fully integrated loading/sensing or corrosion/sensing calibration system, and
  • Multiple measurement devices (acoustic, electromagnetic, magnetic, optical, and radar) for complete assessment of structural behaviors, including cracking, yielding, buckling, fatigue, corrosion, and scour.

 

Additionally, the SPAR Lab features the following equipment:

  • DASnovaTM Fiber Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing System (Sentex Instrument LLC)
  • SM125 Interrogator (Micron Optics)
  • 16-channel si255-16-ST/160-NO Interrogator (Micron Optics)
  • AQ6370C Optical Spectrum Analyzer (Yokogawa)
  • Neubrescope NBX-7020 (Neubrex)
  • Agilent 83437A Broadband Light Source (Agilent) Hewlet Packard
  • RSV-150 Laser Vibrometer (Polytec)
  • 2020i NextEngine Desktop 3D Scanner (NextEngine Inc.)
  • Samos Micro II Acoustic Emission System with 16 R and 8 F Sensors (Physical Acoustics)
  • High-temperature Furnace 
  • Thermostatic: Kewei DH-250 
  • Handheld VIKEN X-Ray scanner
  • Rapid Chloride Test (Germann Instruments)
  • CANIN+ Corrosion Analyzing Instrument (Proceq)
  • Interface1000E Potentiostat/Galvanostat/ZRA (Gamry Instruments)
  • 562 ULTRAlign Precision Linear Stage (Newport)
  • ILS100HA High Performance Linear Stage (Newport)
  • RVS80CC Rotation Stage (Newport)
  • ESP301-2N Motor Controller/Driver (Newport)
  • Instron 5965 Low Capacity Load Frame (Instron)
  • Instructional Shake Table II (Quansar)
  • Electrodynamic Exciter K2075E040 (The Modal Shop, Inc.)
  • High Speed Camera (FASTEC IMAGING)
  • Mass Flow Controller FMA5400/5500 (OMEGA) Model: FMA5543-METHANE - 150LPM
  • Firestar CO2 Laser
  • ELC Voltage Regulator TR-Loss