Description
New manufacturing techniques and innovative materials are making us rethink infrastructure creation, but they've also raised a need for closer structural health monitoring. Autodesk Research collaborated with MX3D to create the world's first 3D-printed steel bridge, and then with Dar Al-Handasah to 3D print a series of bridges from sustainable (recycled and recyclable) material. We drove the effort to add "smarts” to both bridges via sensor networks that capture data about their use. The bridges were modeled as digital twins using innovative visualization technology that has been integrated into Autodesk Platform Services and Autodesk Tandem software. These twins visualize the stress on the bridges' structures as people walk across them. Given the popularity of the 5-meter Dar bridge exhibited at Autodesk University 2022 in New Orleans, we wanted to show more details of our work on these iconic projects, and how they might influence the future of smart and sustainable infrastructure.
Key Learnings
- Learn about the 3D-printing processes used to construct the MX3D and Dar Smart Bridges.
- Learn about options for instrumenting smart infrastructure with sensor technology and time-series databases.
- See how Autodesk Platform Services can be used to build digital twins displaying sensor data in the context of 3D geometry.
- Learn about opportunities and challenges afforded from building and adopting smart infrastructure.