Altair > Case Studies > Altair SmartCore™ Enables Real-Time Foundation Monitoring to Omnifor

Altair SmartCore™ Enables Real-Time Foundation Monitoring to Omnifor

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Sensors - Temperature Sensors

Applicable Industries

Buildings
Cement

Applicable Functions

Maintenance

Use Cases

Building Automation & Control
Structural Health Monitoring

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Based in the Netherlands, Omnifor provides monitoring solutions for building management professionals and governments with operational intelligence through innovative sensor network solutions. They serve local governments, housing corporations, and building owners or managers who need to know the condition of their assets and be informed of any structural changes to ensure safety, schedule preventive maintenance, and plan adequately for future investments. In the western part of the Netherlands, where the soil has insufficient bearing capacity for construction, buildings have been built on timber pile foundations that need to be constantly monitored to avoid deterioration from rotting and fungi.

The Challenge

In the western part of the Netherlands, the soil has insufficient bearing capacity to allow for the construction of buildings and houses. To overcome this issue, buildings in this area have been built on timber pile foundations. These foundations have to be fully submerged in water to avoid pile deterioration from rotting and fungi. Property owners were seeking a way to monitor the structural condition of these timber pile foundations to optimize the timing of inspections and maintenance work. However, visual inspections of buildings and structures were often not conducted frequently enough, as they tend to be time-consuming and costly. For local governments, housing corporations, and building owners or managers, knowing the condition of their assets and being informed of any structural changes is key to ensure safety, schedule preventive maintenance, and plan adequately for future investments.

The Solution

Omnifor teamed up with Altair SmartCore and created a platform for structural health monitoring to track any signs of deterioration or shifting of the foundation. Data is collected at a specific rate to track the evolution of the deterioration and estimate how long the property owner has until repairs are necessary. Omnifor used Altair SmartCore’s IoT platform for all core functions of its Omnifor Service Bus. For this specific Structural Health Monitoring solution (SHM), all sensor nodes are grouped by building or street for each client. This enables Omnifor to control and manage the massive amounts of data produced by the sensor nodes. The portal environment, which is provided by Omnifor to its clients, uses Altair SmartCore’s RESTful API to display the data via comprehensive and interactive charts for further analysis. Since operating the wireless sensor network does not require human intervention, structural health assessments can be performed more frequently and cost-effectively.

Operational Impact

With the implementation of the Altair SmartCore IoT platform, Omnifor has been able to provide a comprehensive solution for real-time monitoring of buildings. This solution allows for the tracking of structure shifts such as changes in settlement, crack width over time, and other indicators of deterioration or shifts. The use of wireless sensor networks has made structural health assessments more frequent and cost-effective. With multiple automatic measurements performed each day over long periods of time, trends become visible. This information facilitates decision-making and prioritization, and allows foundation renewal projects to be executed before the damage becomes serious. The portal environment provided by Omnifor to its clients uses Altair SmartCore’s RESTful API to display the data via comprehensive and interactive charts for further analysis.

Quantitative Benefit