Sensor network to turn additive bridge into ‘living laboratory’

Britain’s national institute for data science, the Alan Turing Institute (ATI), is to turn the world’s first entirely additively-manufactured bridge, a stainless steel structure that is scheduled to be installed across a canal in central Amsterdam in late 2018, into a ‘living laboratory with a sensor network that will both help to understand how such structures behave in use and allow the bridge to be modified if that proves necessary for user safety.

The project will be carried out with MX3D, the Amsterdam-based robotic manufacturing specialist that is making the bridge, Autodesk, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Manufacturing Solutions, and scientists from Imperial College London.

The bridge is to be a 12m-long stainless steel structure that has been designed by Joris Laarman Lab, a design practice in Amsterdam that specialises in digitally-optimised structures. When completed, it will be not only the first 3D-printed bridge, but also the world’s largest 3D-printed structure of any type. The ATI project will see a network of sensors installed on the bridge to measure both structural data, such as strain, displacement and vibration as it is used by pedestrians and cyclists, and environmental factors including air quality and temperature. Together, this information will help engineers monitor the bridge’s health in real time and assess how it changes over its lifetime.