Vibration and tilt monitoring case study
A High-visibility Economic Development Project Required Vibration & Tilt Monitoring.
In January 2022, Intel Corporation announced it was investing more than $20 billion in the construction of two new leading-edge micro-chip factories in Columbus, OH. As the largest single private-sector investment in Ohio history, the facility will span nearly 1,000 acres and will eventually be able to accommodate a total of eight micro-chip factories. At full buildout, the total investment could grow to $100 billion over the next decade, making it one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing sites in the world.
One of the many improvements this high-profile project required was that the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant (SWWTP) outside of Columbus be expanded. Given the scale, visibility, and economic impact of this important project, risk mitigation of potential damage to existing structures at the plant were of paramount importance, and the monitoring of vibration and tilt at the site were included in the project specifications.
DRW Associates of Twinsburg, OH, was retained to monitor potential vibration and tilt of existing structures during the excavation and construction of a new digester that the expansion plan called for. The site for this additional digester required exposing the foundations of an adjacent digester and nearby control facilities.
Joel Kurtz, VP – Operations Manager for DRW Associates, chose to use Inzwa’s Veva III on the project due to the device’s ability to monitor both vibration and tilt.
DRW Associates placed two Inzwa Veva IIIs and two traditional, geophone-based seismographs on the project. According to Kurtz, “the difference was night and day.”
“Let’s start with their size,” he said. “Our existing ‘graphs, I can get about four in the bed of my truck,” he explained. “And because each box weighs at least 60 pounds or so, to get them to the site I need to use a hand truck to carry and maneuver them,” he continued.
Also, because the Inzwa devices came with everything fully integrated, “all I needed to install them was a concrete anchor, a bolt, and a few minutes,” Kurtz said. “Our existing ‘graphs? We had to build the box, then attach a deep-cycle marine battery, a solar panel, a modem, and an external antenna to the ‘graph,” he explained. “The difference was night and day.”
According to Kurtz, getting the two types of monitors activated couldn’t have been more different, either. “Our existing ‘graphs aren’t cloud-based, so the setup is quite a bit more difficult,” he stated. “First we have to dial into the modem from a laptop and program it for the graph; then we connect to the seismograph through the modem and program it through a VPN and AWS (Amazon Web Services). You also can’t interact with the ‘graph in real time [like you can with Inzwa],” he continued. “To check it, you have to log into AWS from your laptop, find the ‘graph, and if you want to know anything about it, you have to stop monitoring to look at any settings.”
“With Inzwa, I was able to program everything in the Cloud platform before I left for the site. Once there, all I had to do was drill a hole, bolt it to the wall, turn it on and confirm it was connected from my tablet, that was it.” And if he wants to check and make adjustments? “All I have to do is log on from my tablet and make the change without needing to stop monitoring, It’s night and day.” Kurtz said. “Every time I don’t have to make a service trip, I know I’m saving money.”
Even without formal ROI analysis, Joel knows he’s saving time and money while increasing productivity with Inzwa’s Veva III devices:
INZWA
Address: 200 W. Butler Avenue, Unit 3111 Philadelphia, PA 19002
Email: sales@inzwatech.com
Phone: 844-44-INZWA
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INZWA
sales@inzwatech.com
200 W. Butler Avenue, Unit 3111
Philadelphia, PA 19002
844-44-INZWA
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