IsoTruss, Inc., an engineering, design, and manufacturing services provider, this week announced it received a $100,000 funding award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The Phase 1 award will be applied towards research and development of a reinforced concrete foundation for telecommunication towers to increase resilience to natural disasters.
Nathan D. Rich, CEO, IsoTruss, Inc., said, “Infrastructure must become safer, longer lasting, and more sustainable. With this grant from the EPA, we can move forward in developing an eco-friendly composite-reinforced concrete foundation aimed at improving resilience while decreasing construction time and costs compared to traditional solutions.”
The proposed IsoTruss-reinforced concrete foundation aims to improve the resiliency over steel-reinforced concrete by better combining the axial and shear strength of the reinforcement, providing more energy absorption and allowing IsoTruss-reinforced concrete to be rated to withstand higher loading conditions.
The company said its reinforced foundation concept was successfully tested with a foam foundation pilot deployment for a commercial customer. The installation costs for this test were reduced by 60 percent compared to a typical tower foundation. The original grid design, based on isosceles triangles, was invented by IsoTruss, Inc. Chief Technical Adviser and Brigham Young University Professor Emeritus David W. Jensen, Ph.D.
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