The Mackinac Bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world and the longest in the western hemisphere. The Mackinac Bridge Authority reports that over 960,000 vehicles crossed the Mighty Mac in the first quarter of 2013. In order to keep the public safe, they have a maintenance program designed to battle corrosion, stress, and general wear. The MBA inspects and maintains (PDF) the network of 42,000 miles of wire in the bridge’s main cables that support the roadway 199 feet over the Straits of Mackinac where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.
Keeping the Mackinac Bridge in good condition through the years, capable of handling the constant flow of traffic and the effects of harsh northern Michigan weather conditions is the job of more than three dozen engineering and maintenance workers. The team has an annual regular maintenance allowance of nearly $3 million which helps workers keep pace with the aging structure, according to reports.
The MBA may have some robotic help in the future. Signe Brewster at GigaOM wrote about a recently patented robot known as FluxCrawler. The FluxCrawler provides a new way to spot flaws in cables like those on the Mackinac Bridge, the Golden Gate bridge, cranes, or elevators before they become a problem. The robot is about two feet long and thin like a ruler, FluxCrawler inches around and up the entire cable.
Unlike current tools, that the author says have their limits, FluxCrawler moves on two wheels and sticks to the cable with magnets. The robot can work with cables 1.5 to 8 inches in diameter and can map flaws at any angle.
FluxCrawler uses a magnetic field. When the field is applied to a cable, any flaws in the cable will cause magnetic flux leakage that can be picked up by the robot ’s sensors. FluxCrawler connects to a computer via Bluetooth and beams back an image of the magnetic field, highlighting any problem areas. This could be a fissure on the outside of the cable or more serious corrosion or cracks deep within it.
FluxCrawler is the work of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Nondestructive Testing in Dresden, Germany. It is being tested on a bridge in Mettlach, Germany, and will next undergo more testing in a laboratory.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
