Tech Tuesday: University of Florida Lab Explore Railway Safety and How Structures Can Be Improved

In today’s Tech Tuesday, UF Innovate’s host Bethany Gaffey introduces us to a technology that engineers can use to inspect the inside of structures – like railroad ties – to make sure they’re strong enough to keep us safe.

“What if we could make railway transportation even safer? We’re here with UF’s civil engineering department to learn more. We’re here in the backscatter lab, but tell us what does that mean and what do you do here?” asked Gaffey.

“I’m Timothy Mueller. I’m a fourth-year PhD student in the civil engineering department under Dr. Christopher Ferraro. What we’re doing here is we’re looking into materials that might be deteriorating from the inside out, but we can’t see that from the top surface. Backscatter radiography is a little unique in that we’re looking at objects that we might not be able to get to the underside of to use traditional x-ray techniques that require a detector on the backside. What we’re looking at is objects that we want to leave in place and use our special technology to scan over them to look into the inside,” said Timothy Mueller, UF civil engineering PhD student.

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