So, hello, good afternoon everyone. My name is Antonio Barrios and I'm currently working towards my PhD at Barcelona Tech in Spain under the supervision of Professor Casas. And today I'm mostly talking about the exact applications that we did in our research group back in Barcelona using optical backscatter of phytometry or OBR based distributed optical fiber sensors. And I must say that I'm actually in the end of my first year and most of the work that I'm going to present was done before I arrived to Barcelona so bear with me as I try to properly present these applications. So just a quick overview of my presentation. First I will introduce briefly the role of fiber optic sensors on SHM. Then I will specifically speak about the distributed form of these fiber sensors. Then I will showcase all the applications that we did using these types of sensors back in Barcelona. And then I will conclude with some remarks about our examples and applications. So in a simple way fiber optic sensors present a lot of advantages when compared with the use of more traditional and electric sensors. Some of them are represented here but I want to pinpoint for instance the fact that they are immune from electromagnetic interferences. So they allow us to obtain very noise free data and also that they are very small and lightweight so they are very easy to install and operate. And there are several different ways of categorizing fiber optic sensors but for the purpose of this presentation we decided to sort them out on these three different categories grading based sensors, interferometric sensors and the distributed sensors. So the distributed sensors are the ones that I am going to speak about here and this happens we think these are very good type of sensors because for the additional advantages that I showcase on the previous slide here an additional advantage is the fact that virtually every cross section of the structural element that is being monitored is being monitored so all the possible damage that is going to occur in this case cracks are going to be covered by the sensor and otherwise that would be not possible with the use of discrete or point sensors. Another additional advantage is when monitoring structural elements specifically for latch the structures the number of sensors that can rapidly increase and with the number of required connections and with the use of doffs of the distributed fiber sensors we can use just one optical fiber, one sensor and with it only one connection cable making the all the monitoring system more easily done. So these sensors work by the interaction between the light source and the optical sensor that this phenomenon is called scattering and it occurs in all directions but it is the back scattering that we are mostly interested in about. The back scattering provides three components and these three components are the Rayleigh component, the Brillian component and the Raman component. There are different ways of using these components to obtain the changes in the structural element that we want. In the time domain we have BLTDR and the BLTDA that they are being the most used and successful techniques applied both based on the Brillian component and they are characterized by providing long range sensing and but however they present a very low special resolution around one meter which is insufficient for crack detection or damage attraction. On the other hand we have in the frequency domain the optical back scatter of the FETOMETRY the Rayleigh based of OFDR that uses the Rayleigh component through the use of this swept wavelength interferometry that provides us a very high special resolution as high as one millimeter for the reading of strain and temperature and this technique is characterized by having a short range sensing but providing a very high special solution that is good for damage detection. And this I forgot to mention this was a technique that we used in all our applications that I'm going to showcase now. So this was the first application that we did back in our laboratory in Barcelona. This was done in 2009. So the main goal here was to assess and study how the sensor was going to perform when used on this concrete slab and also to see if it was able to with the use of this monitoring system to detect and locate the appearance of cracks on these structures. So the four different stretches of this optical fiber sensors were implemented here two on the top side slab and two on the bottom side slab. Here we can see some pictures of this experiment. This was a small slab 5.6 meters long, 1.6 meters wide with the thickness of 0.285. A simple supported slab and the load was implied with the use of this MTS actuator in the middle of the span. So we obtained these graphs with results where we can see the strain plotted against the length of the fiber for different stretches. We analyzed each stretch separately. Here we obtained the ultimate load of the slab of 255.15 kilonewtons. And as you can see, we were able to obtain continuous records for different levels continuous, not only in time but also in space. And as you can see, the peaks that we obtained with these graphs, they present a very good correlation with the visual of certain cracks that were appearing on the slab. So we were able to not only detect but localize the cracks that were appearing in the slab with the use of these sensors. And you can also observe that even for high load levels, the fiber was performing very well and without breaking. And afterwards, this was more recently, there was an algorithm that was developed in order to try to quantify the damage. So for these, we tried to calculate the average crack width in specific zones. We used the strain that we obtained using the OBR sensor. By equalizing these two expressions, we were able to solve it by the sum of the total width of the cracks. And then, dividing by the total number of cracks, we were able to obtain this average crack width. And as you can see here, comparing with the electrical sensors, we have a very good agreement with the stretches that we have with our OBR sensors and the means of these electrical sensors, which is very encouraged and validates the use of this algorithm. More recently, we tried to apply the same sensor for the monitoring and the detection of the shear crack pattern on partially pre-stressed concrete beams or PPC beams. This was done in conjunction with another group in our university. Partially pre-stressed concrete beams, especially, they are designed to allow the crack under service loading. So the use of monitoring systems for the control of cracking is especially important in this case. And the beam was divided into a bending test span and the shear test span. We only instrumented the shear test span and that's what I'm going to speak about here. So we proposed this grid to monitor the crack propagation information in these beams. We proposed two different beams, the BMI-1, where we used two different optical fibers, one that was concentrated in measuring longitudinal strains and the second one for vertical strains. On the second one, in BMI-2, we just used one longer cable that will conform the similar 2D grid for the detection of this crack propagation. Here we see an image of beam I2 with the cable glued to the surface of the beam and here on the right, you can see that we also used a strain rosette with LVDTs for the monitoring for comparison purposes with the results of the OBR sensor. So we analyzed each stretch separately and after analyzing each stretch, we were able and converting all the stretches for a local coordinate system that corresponded with our 2D grid. We were able to form these 2D graphs that have the maps of the shear crack propagation information and as you can see they provide a very good agreement with the visual observed ones with photographic evidence. In the same way that we did with the concrete slab, we also tried to apply this algorithm in the different ways here to calculate the shear crack width and average crack width. I'm not going into a lot of detail here. This is part of the work of my colleague Gerardo Rodriguez who's finishing his PhD. So in the end, I have the references and if you want, you can look up and see more about this. Again, comparing with the more traditional sensors with the LVDTs, we see a very good agreement with the obtained calculator crack width with the OBR and the one obtained with the other sensors. Now going to real world applications. This was the first application that we had on a real world structure in these viaducts on a highway near Barcelona in Spain. It's a 125 meter long bridge that has a deck with 14 meters wide with pre-stressed box beams over five spans that are supported in double piles. And here we used three different optical fibers, two 25 meter long fibers allocated longitudinally to the structure and another one, 50 meter long cable that was allocated perpendicular to the structure in three different cross sections. And here the test was divided between two parts. The first one was a moving load track of 400 kilonewtons that was passing in the second one on the track being stopped on the middle of the bridge with the normal passing of vehicles. And the main goal was to assess and study the feasibility of the use of these sensors on a real world structure and also to compare with other used sensors that were allocated in the structure for initial load tests. So here we can see, for example, in the first part of the test, the obtained strain data on fiber F02, the one that was allocated longitudinally. Here we can see when the track was going in one quarter of the span, we have these distributed off-strain. Then after the test was completed and the removing of the track, we obtained these horizontal strain that was more or less as we expected. On the second part, as I said, the track was stopped on the middle of the span and there was the normal traffic passing by the bridge. And here we can see after 10 minutes of stabilizing the system, we obtained this distribution of strain as we expected with the higher strain in the middle span. So afterwards we tried to calculate the displacement and we were able to calculate the displacement of 3.45 millimeters, the deflection at mid-span with the OBR data. And comparing with the experimental obtained one of 3.71 millimeters, we concluded it presents a very good agreement. Another bridge that was more recently last year in Barcelona, this Sarajevo viaduct, this viaduct is located in one of the main entrances of Barcelona, so there's a lot of traffic passing under by. Here the bridge authorities decided to enlarge the deck, so during this process they asked us to allocate these distributed optical fiber sensors inside the beams. So we used two different optical fibers, DOF 1 and DOF 2 that are showcased here. And this process was done through several months from June last year until more or less February of this year. And as you can see, you can see an evolution of the strains for the different measurements, which was most important was the fact that we could obtain the stress increases and variations with the use of these sensors. And we were able to conclude that there were not induced changes to the structural area that were significant. So the use of these sensors allowed us to assess the safety of this process. Also, this concrete cooling tower in the north of Spain near Barcelona was also instrumented with the use of OBR sensors. Here two main vertical cracks had appeared, so we decided to use the sensors to start the behavior before and after crack repair. And this is a 120 meter high structure. So before allocating the sensors, there was a 3D finite element model that was developed in order to help us decide where we should put the sensors. And it was here in the middle next to the main area of the cracks. So this is one of the examples of the strain rings that we got from the outside surface tower. Here we can see from the inside surface tower. I just would like to pin points here that we can see different types of peaks. And we should be very careful because the concrete presents some roughness that should be taken care in account when analyzing these data. For example, these small peaks, they represent that roughness of the concrete and should not be taken account into cracks. On the other side, these higher peaks that they are dynamic and they change with the time. They are representative of the cracks and the damage formation in this structure. In the same way that I said about the previous bridge in the above the highway, we also perform an integration and obtain the deflection at mid-span using the OBR data. And it was able to see that it agreed very well with the 3D finite element model and with the other electrical sensors. So the use of this sensor allowed for the increase of the lifetime of this cooling tower. And finally, this historical monument in Barcelona, this UNESCO World Heritage Site, was also a target of our application for the OBR sensor by our group. Here, there was some kind of cause of concern because two columns presented some serious cracking. So it was decided to replace those two columns. So we allocated the fiber sensors on the top of the floor during the removal and replacement of these columns. Here, you can see where we allocated the optical fiber sensor. And with it, we obtained these type of measurements. The first column was replaced on the 1st of February. That's why we had three measurements here. Here, it's the old data. So in order to be more clear, we should zoom the information here for a 10 centimeter length. And here, you can see with more precision what was happening. We see that during the first reading that is a calibration, it's around 20 microstrains. And then with the replacement of the first column, there was an increase of strain of between 20 and 14 microstrains. And the highest strain that was achieved was 100. But since we have to subtract the initial calibration, we would say that the maximum increase of strain was of 80 microstrains. Then we can see that for the last reading, the structure is indeed regaining stiffness. So it's as we were expecting. So I'm reaching my conclusions. And with these examples, we saw that the OBR sensor is a very promising technology for SAGM, since it allows for continuous not only in time, but also in space of strain and temperature measurements. With these experiments, the main objectives were to assess the performance of these sensors, both in laboratory and real-world conditions. We saw with these examples a very good performance of this technique, since it showed a very good agreement and good correlation with the use of other conventional sensors. One thing that we also concluded is that the use of a correct bounding agent and the smoothing of the concrete surface before applying the sensor is very important in these types of applications. Also, the OBR sensors, they present a very good performance for either low levels or low levels close to the failure of concrete. And finally, since this is a workshop that tries to quantify the value of SHM, the economic impact of these sensors, although they present a very high initial investment especially on the acquisition system, we think that they present a very important economical saving when comparing with other monitoring techniques, since there's no other technique that is able to provide the same information with the same number of monitored points. So here are the references if you want to look further up about these applications. And thank you very much. If you have any question, please feel free.


Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello everyone, welcome back to our live coverage here in Bahrain for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of AWS Summit here in the Middle East and the region. Our first time here, lots of observations, lots of learnings, and also great people we're meeting. I'm John Furrier, your host at theCUBE. Our next guest is Mohamed Aliakharid, who's the Chief Executive of the Information E-Government Authority, also known as IGA. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you for hosting me. So you last night at dinner, we were talking about all the opportunities. So the first question I have to ask you is, as you guys have bring in the digital transformation, which is happening, you now have Amazon here with the region, how is that changing things? Of course, always we try to innovate, and the technology, if you don't innovate, if you don't, make sure that you are ready for the changes coming is very difficult. When we announced our first strategy, 2007, we delivered it in 2010 becoming the leader in the region, delivering 200 services over four channels. But as you mentioned, usually in the technology, the longest cycle is the infrastructure and servers and configurations, buying things and configuring. And with the leadership vision of transforming the country, the vision 2030, transformations happening in the judicial system, into the commercial registrations, into the customs, into health and education, you know, the pace of change required and the ambition is very much, much higher. And particularly when you develop something and you were successful. So our leaders said, okay, we are a bit slow, you need to fast things up. So then we looked into the Amazon and the cloud, how it can help us. And usually in Bahrain, we don't have the luxury of trial and error, trying things and if it works and you know, try multiple things. So we have to study it well. This is why we looked into the cloud, what it can bring to the country, the agility, the time to market. And when we put the strategy forward, it was a comprehensive one. Like leaders decided to go cloud first policy, everybody should move because that's the way forward. That's the way that the kingdom can deliver its vision. And that was the cloud first decision. When was that made? That was last year and when it was made, you know, it's not a piece of strategy. You have to look at it in a comprehensive way. You have to look into your laws, legislations, compliance, audit, architectures, policies, skill sets available, the procurement process, the tendering process and you have to review all of that and make sure that there is no show blockers or barriers for the implementation. Otherwise, it will take a long time. This is why in a year time, we managed to migrate huge workloads to the cloud. We were talking last night about how hard it is just to figure out the future. Never mind provisioning all the gear you got to do and the training. And so the cloud first is very interesting, but I also want to just tell you that we talked about also how hard it is. So when I say, oh, go cloud first, it's so easy, right? Not it isn't, there's a lot of work involved. Take us through some of the things that you guys have done. Look, your learnings prior to cloud first and the key learnings now that cloud first has been under your belt for over a year. Of course, always with the governments, the biggest challenge will happen about the security. How I'm going to move, losing the control, putting my processing and storage outside the government. How I'm going to protect it, somebody else is there. That's the biggest challenge, that's number one. Number two, people doesn't understand. They think it's a processing. So okay, I have my processing power, I will save some money, that's not much. But they don't think about the ultimate goal, about the time to market. When you have a new vision, when you have a new service to be delivered, you cannot wait for 18, 24 months for the infrastructure, getting their idol for a couple of years until you know the full utilization of them. So this is why the ultimate goal is much, much bigger. And the thing about the issue of somebody else looking into your- So speed is critical. And you guys have speed under your belt. You did a Formula One race track in what, 14 months I heard. Various fast construction. The Amazon region's going up in record time. Is this a cultural thing, just go fast? People like speed? The need for speed? We like that, the Formula One of course, that's part of our DNA. And our leaders always push the citizens. And that's the Bahraini culture. Yeah, the other thing too about the application now to get back to our serious conversation, to have innovation, you need to have software development go on. In a way that's not the 24 month, well we built it and no one really, you don't know if you tested it or not. But you got to build the DevOps model, infrastructure as code. How far along are you on the infrastructure as code? Because the developer side's going to be very great. Amazon's proven that developers love it, easy to get going, lower cost of test, agility, time to market, time to value. The setup for you guys is a little bit different. You got infrastructure as code, you're not a startup, but you want to act like one. But what do you got to do for the infrastructure? Of course the infrastructure in terms of processing, that's easy because it's been migrated. Most of it's been migrated. Our port are all channels, our mobile channel. The networks, you got 5G, do you have 5G here yet? We're already experimenting, ready for it. The frequencies already freed up for the telcos to utilize them, it's already there for the 5G. Of course fiber is everywhere, all the government entities connected to the fiber. High speed, we have 100, we have a gig, we have 10 gig. We have all kinds of C-development. No problem for bandwidth in the country. I don't think so. We don't have an issue about the bandwidth. And the processing power once moved, then the optimization which already happened. But as you mentioned, coming to the development, we started already developing into the serverless, using the lambdas, you know, born in the cloud concept. That was not there once we started. But now we're already educating and training our employees. What's the reaction to it? The reaction, I mean, it's excellent. I gave an example today about the fingerprint authentication. That's a basic service, but it requires, you know, a huge demand return from all the telcos, all transactions happening in telcos, private hospitals, the banking are coming, any authentication happens. It has to happen in a second. So that requires a huge, massive infrastructure. Once we built it at the beginning for only a few customers, we invested about a quarter of a million dinar at that time. Now, I think, you know, it's been moved completely to serverless concept and new development. So, he's saving. Simple idea, hard to implement in the old way, but the new way you got to wire APIs around, sling APIs and connect devices, telcos environments quickly. So this brings up the integration. This is the benefit of the cloud. The glue layer is what? Microservices, is it APIs? How are you making that lambda function?  I mean, a basic thing. But initially, you know, you need a testing environment and you know, development, whatever, and lots of infrastructure. And then you have to secure all of that, secure your data. Now it's, I mean, friction of that cost and much faster go to market. I'm a huge believer in the services model. This is why microservices is a big deal right now in cloud. So if you look at all the cloud native conversations, it's containers, we're using it, no problem. Very good to use containers. They're great. Kubernetes now, orchestration, but dealing with state and stateless applications is now the new challenge because there's so many new services that are spinning up. Soon you're going to be like ordering McDonald's, you know, I'll have a microservice over here. So this is the world you were moving to. This is the services. Exactly. And we would like to build a center of excellence, you know, because we get into this journey. We looked into all of our legislations and the ecosystem, trained our employees. The skill set is very important with the program with Tamkeen. We looked into the training strategy, all the portfolio training, making sure that our Bahrainis have the ability to, you know, to develop, to operate databases and all aspects, even the planning of it. The institutes, partners to be ready to train, you know, the private sector and everybody. You know, Mohamed, I'm really impressed with the entrepreneurial people that I've met. They got a good mojo to them because they're kind of cocky, which I love about, but they're not arrogant. They're like, they're smart. And so I got a good, I see good community there. The question for you is, as you move to cloud native, how's that transition? The young kids get it, I mean, there's no problem. What, where's the progress on the skill set gap? I've heard that conversation. I just don't see it being a problem. If the young kids are, you know, eating up the cloud stuff and like there's nobody's business, then I don't see a problem. What's your take on this skills gap thing? I mean, the guys I met and the entrepreneurs, they're like, they want more action. Exactly, the point is the current employees that we have already, hundreds of government employees that they've been trained in a different environment with a different technologies. I get a couple of questions from some of the professionals in the market, private sector and government sector. How we can benefit out of that? How we can help? We are experts in the field, but okay, cloud for us is the new thing. So as you mentioned, for them, it might be a bit more difficult. So what we did in the IGA, we created a task force of the most brilliant team and told them, okay, you have to migrate the workloads. Train will give you the training and you have to migrate. Go. Next, you have now to optimize. Give the task of migration to somebody else, a new team and the old team, they have to optimize. Third, now you have to work on, you know, born on the cloud, develop on the cloud, you know, create the environment of the cloud and new concept. So that's how we take our- They're spreading the work around through hands-on training. Of course, and you know, you train and then you get them into the action, you know, hands-on and so on, one by one. But eventually the university is already working on the training their students. So we want to make sure that part of the curriculum, the cloud is there. For the new generations to take it from day one. You know, you guys are a learning culture, my observation, first time here, very impressed, very friendly, which is always cool. But it's a multilingual culture. So if you add source code to the new lingua, coding is going to be critical. Are you guys getting at the younger generation really when they're young? How young are you going in terms of the new language? Software? Yep. Thoughts on that? What's that? Starting, of course, from school. Elementary school? From elementary school, trying to get them into the coding, universities as well. And thousands of thousands of... So you are, you guys are teaching kids the code? Of course, and you know, any citizen, they can get any certifications, free of charge. According to the agreement with Tamkeen, Labor Fund, they are willing to train any Bahrainian, any professional certifications, free of charge. That's great. To be ready for the next, and making Bahrainian... So there's no excuses? Of course. There it is. To make Bahrainians a choice for employment. Yeah. You know? If that's the future, we have to make them ready for the future. That's great. And the cloud's going to give you all that energy. Talk about the relationship with Amazon a bit. Amazon Web Services. Obviously, Teresa Carlson really behind this. The whole team, I talk about the company, I see them getting behind and partnering with you guys. It's just, they're not just coming in here and being Amazon. There's a real co-development ethos. Talk about the relationship you have with it. It's impressive, I mean, the way that we work in a partnership way. Everybody should think about the long term, not the short term, you know, part of the partnership that they should help the economy. You know, the Bahrain is for employment, making sure that the economy will benefit out of this move to Bahrain. And as well, we have to help with the legislations, with the regulations, with the, you know, any infrastructure connectivity to the international links, whatever they need, we try to help them because we believe that eventually it will create the ecosystem for the market. Well, I know they opened up a lot of doors for you guys and then for us as well, they attracted us to come and cover the territory here. So we're super excited and I'm so glad we came because I learned a lot. It was been fantastic. Okay, your big idea, final question. What's your big idea that's going to come out of the cloud? It doesn't have to be your idea, in your personal opinion, what is going to happen five years down the road? What is it going to look like? What will this new magic look like? What's the outcome? I think it will be a major restructure and reform in the government. So most of the people working into the routine work, if you know, buying and configuring, buying and configuring, they can be more focused into the real problem about innovation, trying to bring solutions to the problems and issues in the country, trying to develop software that will help the economy to foster and to look at what is required, what is the vision of the leaders, try to implement those. So most of the people who think business before it was like isolation, the technical people, only they have their territory, their environment, looking at the wires and hardware and configurations and somebody else looking into the development and the third group of people who are looking strategically analytics and how to utilize it. So I think what we'd have, we will emerge those people thinking only about the solutions and how to analyze and how to come with the new solutions out of those analytics. And that model has been consolidated, those silos have been broken down with the cloud, brings it all together. Developers are now on the front lines. And they're driving the business. They're the driving the business, coming back to drive. Well, I'm great to have you on, great to see you, thanks for sharing your insight. And congratulations, looking forward to tracking all the great coverage. Amazing opportunity here for everyone in the country and also for Amazon and for us, great to meet new people. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, you can reach me on Twitter at Furrier, F-U-R-R-I-E-R or just search, I'm open. All my channels are open. Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, you name it. Say hello, reach out, stay with us. More all day coverage after this short break.