Infrastructure rock stars

摘要

Sixty percent of bridge collapses are caused by hydraulic reasons, including scour, says Genda Chen, PhD, which is why he and a team of researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) created "smart" rocks to detect damage before it becomes a deadly problem. Scour is an erosion process where water flow flushes away riverbed deposits and creates holes around a bridges pier or abutment. Floods intensify the scour effects to quickly make a bridge unstable.