HEalth evAluaTion of COncrete Fundation For ElEctricity transport – HEAT COFFEE

Electrical energy plays a very important role or the welfare and survival of human beings and for the development of the country. Electricity must necessarily be available at a competitive price and at a regular, uninterrupted, uniform and stable supply. Otherwise, there will be disruptions in productivity, which will affect national growth and economy. Recent national and international news, unfortunately, show also that energy strongly affects purchasing power and plays a strategic role in international conflicts.
RTE manages nearly 270,000 pylons/foundations built since the beginning of the 20th century. The replacement cost is around €2.7 billion. It would contribute to a total emission of 16.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent and would require an energy of 53 TWh by taking into account only the material contribution! Several international studies blame concrete quality and durability problems for the stability problems of high voltage towers. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new technology to inspect concrete foundations and soil (especially regarding impact of extreme weather events, which unfortunately are becoming more and more frequent).
The object of HEAT COFFEE project is to develop a decision support solution to manage the concrete foundations of its par, based on the development of small size mock-ups. There is currently no research team, no company, no intelligent calculation or management tool to meet these objectives
The project is broken down into 3 main working groups that call upon different scientific disciplines. In the first work group, the aim is to develop a technique for the detection of concrete foundations and the characterization of its heterogeneities (pebble nests, cracking, porosity), based on GPR electromagnetic methods and SAR imaging. The second work group will contribute to the development of a small-scale mock-up to test the mechanical behavior of the soil/concrete foundation/connectors/pylons assembly after aging, development of certain concrete pathologies and submission to climatic hazards. The tests will be performed in-situ using X-ray tomography to identify the failure mechanisms. EMA will be used to quantify the dynamic properties and their evolution with respect to the degradation stage. The third working group will focus on "machine learning". The application of learning models will allow to get the best possible benefit from the acquisition of information on the experimental model. The implementation of prediction models on the occurrence of pathologies will be carried out within the RTE network.