As part of the ANR SSHEAR (« Sols, Structures et Hydraulique : Expertise et Recherche Appliquée ») project, the IFSTTAR laboratory leads a study about scouring risks at a train bridge. To collect data on the long term, Ubertone provided a set of sensors powered by battery and solar panels.

The results are presented in this paper, also available on Researchgate: Christophe Chevalier, Frédérique Larrarte, Real time instability of flow close to a scour affected abutment, 2022, Environmental Fluid Mechanics.

This study is also described in Hydraulics and Bridges: A French study of monitoring of a bridge affected by scour. The paper concludes that: "Scouring is a major risk for civil engineering structures and the complexity of the phenomena justifies monitoring real sites. It could thus both help to prevent major failures and to have a better understanding of scouring processes. To fully observe these processes, this monitoring should not only include bathymetric (or depth) and water level measurements, but also velocity profile acquisition in order to have a complete observation of scour processes among time.

The innovative in situ monitoring device presented in this paper show that such complex instrumentation is now possible thanks to the progress of sensors, including acoustics."

A camera takes a picture two times a day, a levelmeter measures every 5th minute, and a UB-Flow does several profile measurements every 5 minutes too.

The UB-Flow is installed downlooking on a floating board and observes the vertical over 1.5m depth.

All the collected data are made available on cloud.ubertone.eu and can be accessed with a personal account by the users. The camera pictures may be visualised on the cloud or downloaded like every recorded data.

Depending on the sunshine and the battery level, the charge controller may cut the power for the camera and the modem. Only the UB-Flow continues measuring independently. It stops automatically when the battery voltage is too weak and starts measuring again as soon as the voltage is high enough. When the battery is full, the UB-Flow can measure 4 days without sun.