Another big award for Trail’s Austin Engineering this week. Mary Austin is the Director of Business Development and provided an update from Vancouver where she accepted the Clean Energy BC ‘Operational Excellence’ award for the second year in a row. She explains Austin Engineering and its partners, Selkirk College, Fortis BC and UBC-Okanagan, are looking at how earthquakes may affect dams.
“We said, hey, let’s take these models, they kind of look like big fish tanks with water going through a 3D printed version of the dam and we’re able to study them in all different ways. And we took it and we put it on the shake table which simulates earthquakes in Kelowna at the UBC-Okanagan campus.”
Austin says some ground breaking results have come out of the research and they’re moving onto phase three soon. “Phase one was the first time something like this has been done in the industry and it got a lot of attention and interest and we just realized how much more research needed to be done and how much more we wanted to learn by the rapid prototyping technology.”
One thing that the research found was that the water in the dams can absorb some of the shock of the earthquake, or “create a damping effect” as Austin puts in. SHe says it’s possible some dams have been over engineering some of the retrofits. This is where the research will continue as it could save on costs.
Austin is proud to see the region as leaders in the industry. “It showed that this innovation is taking place right in BC in the small communities that are part of these dams integrated into the river. It’s also been getting a lot attention internationally. People really respect the Canadian dam industry and the expertise here.”
She adds the Metal Tech Alley initiative has helped make this possible with investments in the MIDAS lab, i4C, and other local innovations taking place. She feels it’s helping other industries shine and is grateful to be a part of it.
They’re also looking to host a Clean Technology conference sometime next year in Trail.
