How a civil engineer uses his bass guitar to test flood resiliency
When a crucial piece to his dike safety experiment didn’t arrive, civil engineer Juan Aguilar-López decided to improvise. He used his bass guitar and amp to create sound vibrations that could be detected by light emitting fibre optic senors. Through this experiment, Aguilar-López could inspect the dikes, measuring water pressure and detecting where the dikes might be vulnerable to a breach.
The Colombian researcher moved to the Netherlands in 2011 to research and help improve the country’s vast flood defence system. The Netherlands has some of the most robust and carefully designed dike systems in the world, with nearly 22,000 km of flood protection. Aguilar-López’s idea was to use vibrating fibre optic cables to spot weaknesses and detect potential breaches long before rising waters can do any damage.
To test his model, Aguilar-López set up a simulation at the Flood Proof Holland lab, near the Delft University of Technology campus, with an artificial dike. He laid down 140 metres of fibre optic cable and then flooded the channel before taking to his bass. Where dike inspection before was done visually for spotting defects from aboveground, Aguilar-López’s experiment showed you could see inside the dike using light and sound vibration. When using his bass for this purpose, he could even tell what note he was playing by the light response alone!
Civil engineers design essential public service structures including roads, canals, sewage systems and the foundational components of structural engineering projects like buildings. With so much of civil engineering relying on land composition, it was essential for Aguilar-López to understand the soil’s integrity and moisture tolerance to guarantee these essential flood systems could continue keeping the Netherlands safe.
APEGA is proud to safeguard the public welfare of Albertans while civil engineers make essential infrastructure safe.
Read more about this civil engineer’s work with flood resiliency.