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Contactless monitoring of artificial rock-fill breakwaters
Carapace™ is a survey/mapping solution based on 3D point cloud computer vision analysis that gives the position and orientation of every block of an artificial breakwater.
The Carapace™ solution creates a reliable 3D digital twin from point clouds acquired from drones, allowing for monitoring the movement of each individual block of an artificial breakwater over time. An additional asset management module records all information to create a comprehensive knowledge base for taking better decisions.
Benefits include compliance assessment with design and a better understanding of the structure's behaviour to optimise and reduce maintenance costs.
To protect dikes, piers and jetty from the destructive power of waves, the solution often adopted by designers is to create a breakwater using nested concrete blocks. These prefabricated blocks come in a range of different forms such as the Seabee (Australia), Accropodes (France), Stabilopods, Xbloc (The Netherlands), Core-loc™ (US), Dolos (UK), Tetrapods or Cubipodos.
However, over time these breakwaters run the risk of being damaged due to seabed deformation, wave impacts, concrete degradation or many other factors.
Carapace requires high density points cloud of the breakwater. Different technologies can be used like LIDAR scanner, photogrammetry or multibeam bathymetry, depending on the configuration, design and accessibility of the structure.
Georeferenced photogrammetry processed from drone images is often the preferred solution considering its low cost and flexibility.
Using an advanced machine vision algorithm, Carapace™ identifies the shape of each block and defines/records its position and orientation. The consolidation of all this data forms an accurate digital twin of the structure.
Deep analysis of block nesting is then possible to assess the compliance of the "as built" with the design.
When data acquisition is performed at different times Carapace™ computes the 3D movement of each block. It includes X, Y, Z displacement + rotation.
beMap™ platform filtering and clipping toolboxes allows for a clear understanding of the behaviour of the structure and helps to detect any critical situation.
The asset management module of Carapace™ not only records the historical movements of each block, but also a set of metadata (manufacturing lot, weight, dates...), the natural events (storm, heavy rain, etc... ) as well as maintenance operations and inspections previously performed.
Benefits of Carapace™ for asset owners and maintainers include:
