image: Wavelogix, a manufacturer of patented, novel concrete strength sensors invented by Purdue University professor Luna Lu, has received $3 million in Series A funding from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Rhapsody Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that specializes in hard-tech investments.
Credit: Purdue University photo/Rebecca Robinos
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Wavelogix, a manufacturer of novel, patented concrete strength sensors invented at Purdue University’s College of Engineering, has received $3 million in Series A funding from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Rhapsody Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that specializes in hard-tech investments.
Luna Lu, Purdue’s Reilly Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and Wavelogix’s founder, invented the Rebel concrete strength sensors.
“Rhapsody’s investment in Wavelogix shows that our sensors bring immense value to the industry,” she said. “Its funding will allow us to scale manufacturing and enable nationwide deployment of the technology.”
Jason Whaley is a general partner and co-founder of Rhapsody Venture Partners. He is an experienced entrepreneur and startup investor in the hard-tech space. Prior to Rhapsody, Whaley was the co-founder and CEO of Manus Biosynthesis, an industrial biotechnology company.
“Wavelogix’s solution is transformative for concrete construction,” he said. “Short-term, it will allow accelerated project timelines and eliminate costly quality control errors. Beyond this, Wavelogix will enable data-driven decision-making and optimization of concrete mix designs, which will reduce carbon footprints, eliminate waste and lead to more durable structures.”
Lu disclosed the sensor system to the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization, which applied for the patent to protect the intellectual property and licensed it to Wavelogix.
Why monitoring concrete matters
According to data from the Federal Highway Administration, concrete pavement makes up less than 2% of U.S. roads but approximately 20% of the U.S. interstate system. Lu’s research has focused on improving the conditions of concrete pavement first because it is the most challenging road material to repair. Concrete interstate pavement also must reliably support a large proportion of the nation’s traffic.
“Traffic jams caused by infrastructure repairs have wasted 4 billion hours and 3 billion gallons of gas on a yearly basis. This is primarily due to insufficient knowledge and understanding of concrete’s strength levels,” Lu said. “For instance, we don’t know when concrete will reach the right strength needed to accommodate traffic loads just after construction. The concrete may go through premature failure, leading to frequent repairing.”
The Rebel concrete strength sensor from Wavelogix communicates to engineers via a smartphone app exactly when pavement is strong enough to handle heavy traffic. (Photo provided by Wavelogix) Download image
Developing the Rebel concrete strength sensors
Traditional methods used by the construction industry for more than a century call for testing large samples of concrete at a lab or on-site facility. Using that data, engineers estimate the strength level that a particular concrete mix will reach after it’s been poured and left to mature at a construction site. Even though these tests are well understood by the industry, discrepancies between lab and outdoor conditions can lead to inaccurate estimates of the concrete’s strength due to the different cement compositions and temperatures of the surrounding area.
With the Rebel concrete strength sensors, engineers no longer have to rely on samples to estimate when fresh concrete is ready for traffic. They can instead directly monitor the fresh concrete and accurately measure many of its properties at once.
The sensor communicates to engineers via a smartphone app exactly when the pavement is strong enough to handle heavy traffic. The stronger the pavement is before being used by vehicles, the less often it will need to be repaired. The ability to instantly receive information about the concrete’s strength levels also allows roads to open to traffic on time or sooner following a fresh pour.
Construction workers can install Rebel sensors simply by tossing them onto the ground of the concrete formwork and covering them with concrete. Next, they plug the sensor cable into a reusable handheld device that automatically starts logging data. Using the app, workers can receive information on real-time changes in the concrete strength for as long as the data is required.
Wavelogix’s sensor system has already garnered national recognition. In April, Wavelogix received the 2024 Edison Awards gold honor for critical human infrastructure. The sensor was also on Time’s Best Inventions of 2023 list, and Fast Company magazine named this invention one of its Next Big Things in Tech for 2022. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure selected the technology as one of its “Gamechangers” for the year.
In 2022 Wavelogix received a $255,996 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation to develop its technology.
About Wavelogix
Wavelogix is a Purdue University spinout that has developed a proprietary Internet of Things sensing and data analytics platform for infrastructure quality testing. Its award-winning sensing technology provides real-time measurements of in-place concrete strength, allowing construction engineers to make accurate, data-driven decisions about materials selection, scheduling, budgets and resource allocation.
About Rhapsody
Rhapsody Venture Partners is a venture firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that funds early-stage applied science and engineering companies. Rhapsody’s team works side by side with entrepreneurs to secure anchor customers that reduce time to commercialization and accelerate growth.
About Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization
The Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization operates one of the most comprehensive technology transfer programs among leading research universities in the U.S. Services provided by this office support the economic development initiatives of Purdue University and benefit the university’s academic activities through commercializing, licensing and protecting Purdue intellectual property. In fiscal year 2023, the office reported 150 deals finalized with 203 technologies signed, 400 disclosures received and 218 issued U.S. patents. The office is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which received the 2019 Innovation & Economic Prosperity Universities Award for Place from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. In 2020, IPWatchdog Institute ranked Purdue third nationally in startup creation and in the top 20 for patents. The Purdue Research Foundation is a private, nonprofit foundation created to advance the mission of Purdue University. Contact otcip@prf.org for more information.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the new Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, and Purdue Computes — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.
Writer: Steve Martin, sgmartin@prf.org
Media contact: Joe Turek, joe.t@wavelogix.tech