SPRINGVILLE, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IsoTruss, Inc., an engineering, design, and manufacturing services provider, today announced 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 resiliency 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 resiliency 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 advantages of IsoTruss®-reinforced concrete foundations can be also realized by decreasing installation costs and time. The IsoTruss®-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% compared to a typical tower foundation.
The success of IsoTruss®-reinforced concrete solutions in the telecom industry will allow future entry into other applications such as roads, bridges, and buildings.
Cromwell Wong, COO, IsoTruss, Inc., said, “This solution will be timely for telecom tower owners with the transition to 5G networks in the US that will increase tower density by approximately 10 times, leading to a total addressable market of $75 billion.”
IsoTruss, Inc. was one of 30 American small businesses to receive EPA funding to develop novel technologies to address pressing environmental and public health problems.
IsoTruss® solutions, such as carbon fiber lattice cell towers, are well-suited to hurricane/typhoon-prone regions. This is mostly due to the corrosion-resistance of the composite material, the superior wind resistance of the IsoTruss® geometry which extends product lifetimes by five times over steel solutions, and the integration of axial and shear components of the reinforcement into a single structure design.
IsoTruss® carbon fiber cell towers reduce material usage by twelve times on a weight basis, resulting in 70% reduction in carbon emissions. If every 5G tower were composite, it would prevent 56,000 tons of CO2 from being emitted.
The original IsoTruss® 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.
With a global portfolio of more than thirty patented and patent-pending structural and composite material designs that protect not only the configurations but also the manufacturing processes, IsoTruss, Inc., is committed to building the sustainable infrastructure of the future through innovative solutions in engineering, design, manufacturing and construction.
For more information, please visit https://www.isotruss.com/faq or contact info@Isotruss.com.
IsoTruss Inc., an engineering, design, and manufacturing services provider currently manufactures patented IsoTruss® lattice cell towers for the telecommunications industry. IsoTruss® cell towers are made of composite materials, making them exceedingly strong, lightweight, cost-effective, durable, corrosion-resistant, eco-friendly and sustainable. Utilizing IsoTruss® Technologies, its family of patented, composite material grid structures that are twelve times stronger than steel or 1/12 its weight, depending on the design, the enterprise offers R&D capabilities and applications and solutions in telecommunications, aerospace, civil infrastructure, energy, construction, and leisure, and more.
