National Science Foundation funds concrete strength sensor start up

In addition to WaveLogix duties, Luna Lu serves on the Purdue University Lyles School of Civil Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in materials engineering, and as founding director of the Indiana school’s Center for Intelligent Infrastructure.

WaveLogix, a Purdue University-incubated company commercializing an Internet of Things sensing system to monitor cast-in-place or precast concrete infrastructure, has earned a six-month, $256,000 SBIR Phase I grant from the National Science Foundation to develop its technology.

WaveLogix’s Rebel brand of sensors improves upon the industry standard to measure concrete strength: Breaking multiple field-cured concrete samples. Destructive concrete strength testing has several drawbacks including inaccuracy, quality control issues, user variability, material waste and expense. The Rebel sensor system directly measures real-time, in-place concrete strength without requiring destructive concrete testing or maturing curve development. Rebel sensors also are not impacted by concrete mix design, meaning the mix can be changed during a project.

“The funding will help accelerate the product development phase, particularly the IoT platform for data processing and sharing,” says Luna Lu, WaveLogix founder and chief science officer, and Purdue Lyles School of Civil Engineering ACPA Professor. “After the beta testing, we start the manufacturing of sensors, with the focused initial market on roads, bridges and other major infrastructure projects.”

WaveLogix plans to conduct beta testing of the Rebel sensor system in 2023.

Lu invented the underlying WaveLogix technology, having disclosed it to the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization. The Rebel brand of concrete strength sensors was named a 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers GameChanger. A companion scientific paper earned ASCE’s 2022 Alfred Noble Prize.