Material communicating with the BIM (McBIM) – McBIM

Apart from Work Packages dedicated to management and specifications, the McBIM project is mainly composed of 3 scientific Work Packages (WP2 to WP4) and a technical one (WP5). Each scientific Work Package is dedicated to issues related to one of the three main scientific domains addressed by the McBIM project, i.e. Development of low power wireless sensor nodes, Management of WSN Data collection and Interoperability with the BIM. The last Work Package, WP5, is the one related to the experiments, and in-situ tests. Four laboratory prototypes (PRO1 to PRO4) have been developed, and a last one, INT1, corresponds to their integration.

The McBIM project resulted in innovative solutions such as a hybrid architecture of eco-efficient sensor nodes for reinforced concrete, eco-efficient data collection algorithms, and a project-specific ontology. Industrial partner 360SC was able to expand its offerings to provide innovative BIM-based data management and monitoring services. As part of this project, LAAS-CNRS developed collaborations with LMDC in Toulouse and the University of Cambridge, UK. CRAN began collaborating with LS2N in Nantes.

Several perspectives are envisaged. As mentioned, A. ROXIN (LIB) is involved in several committees and standardisation actions, at national and international level. In connection with these different works, several perspectives have been opened by the ANR McBIM project. At a national level, the McBIM ontology developed in the framework of WP4 would allow to integrate the results of working groups such as the Masonry WG. It is the specification according to the experimental standard PP-BIM (XP P07-150) of several objects and properties for the masonry domain, produced in the framework of the BIM2022 Plan. Among the objects, it is indeed concrete objects that are mainly targeted, in particular concrete walls, stairs, floors or balconies. At an international level, the ontology thus created could be proposed as an extension of the SML (semantic Modeling and Linking) standard produced by CEN TC442 (prEN 17632-1:2021). This European standard specifies an approach for modelling construction information and processes at three levels of abstraction using Semantic Web technologies. A first extension of this standard has been voted in early summer 2022, and related work will start later this summer. This extension will concern the types of construction materials and A. ROXIN is part of the editorial committee. FINAO/360SmartConnect has also been interested by Blockchains for a long time. It thus plans to couple the McBIM architecture with Blockchains and the development of smart contracts, dedicated to the transfer of ownership in construction.

David, M.; Derigent, W.; Loubet, G.; Takacs, A.; Dragomirescu, D. Communicating materials: Communicating concrete development for construction industry. IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform. 2024.

Roxin, W.; Abdou, W.; Derigent, W. Interoperable digital building twins through communicating materials and semantic BIM. SN Comput. Sci. 2022, 3 (1), 23.

Wan, H.; David, M.; Derigent, W. Energy-efficient chain-based data gathering applied to communicating concrete. Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw. 2020, 16 (8).

Loubet, G.; Takacs, A.; Dragomirescu, D. Implementation of a Battery-Free Wireless Sensor for Cyber-Physical Systems dedicated to Structural Health Monitoring Applications. IEEE Access: special section on cyber-physical systems. 2019, 7, 24679-24690.

In 2009, the CRAN laboratory begun to study the concept of “communicating materials” where materials are able to communicate with their environment, process, exchange information, and store data in their own structure. Besides, they also have the capability to sense their environment and measure their own internal physical states. This concept has been applied to the construction industry and led a physical prototype based on RFID tags embedded into the product structure. However, RFID are limited in memory, and must be read at short distance. In another hand, BIM (Building Information Modelling) data and models are often limited to design phases and neither reused nor accessible for downstream actors. To solve both problems, the McBIM objectives are 1) to design a “communicating concrete”, made of concrete equipped with embedded low-energy wireless micro-sensor network, able to manage and exchange data with BIM platforms, and 2) to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach across two building lifecycle phases, namely the construction and exploitation phases (for structural health monitoring).
To build this communicating concrete, several scientific obstacles should be solved: a) the design of robust wireless communications, not impacted by the concrete environment, b) the definition of innovative RF harvesting techniques to maximize the lifetime of embedded sensor nodes, c) the definition of new data management strategies controlling how data (either generated by sensor nodes, or sent by users) are spread into the WSN for a fast and reliable data storage and retrieval, d) the definition of a native BIM interoperability of the concrete material, based on IFC standard, to ensure a correct communication with BIM platforms.
The McBIM consortium is composed of 4 partners (CRAN, LE2I, LAAS, 360SC), all gathering the needed competences for the project success. McBiM is running over 42 months and decomposed into 6 WPs, 2 dedicated to project management and specfications, 3 dedicated to previous enounced scientific obstacles, and 1 to prototype manufacturing and experimentation on sites.
Due to its multi-disciplinary nature, the McBIM project is expected to have a large impact on multi-disciplinary science, combining the knowledge and techniques of the various disciplines to find new insights and new approaches, and create highly innovative solutions and products related to robust wireless transmission, low-energy micro-nodes adapted to reinforced concrete conditions, data management algorithms for WSN, interoperability with BIM platforms in the IoT. In agreement with the other partners, our partner 360SC, specialized in “connected concrete” could extend their offers to propose innovative data management and monitoring services to their clients, based on the project results.