Sentea looks to develop and market advanced silicon photonics based fibre optic sensing solutions. These will be used to continuously monitor engineering structures for signs of damages that over time could lead to catastrophic failure, as well as to control industrial installations to maximise their efficiency.
According to the new market research report from MarketsandMarkets, the structural health monitoring market is estimated to grow from $1.48 billion in 2018 to $3.38bn by 2023, at a CAGR of 17.93% between 2018 and 2023.
The major factors driving the growth of the structural health monitoring market include concerns about catastrophic failure due to aging infrastructures in the developed countries, stringent government regulations pertaining to the sustainability of structures, and the superior benefits of structural health monitoring.
Furthermore, the structural Health Monitoring Market for the Energy vertical is expected to grow at a rate of more than 20% from 2018-2023, owing to various applications such as wind turbines, nuclear power plants and hydropower plants.
“Integrating all optical functions into a single silicon photonics component will allow us to make highly accurate, small and robust fibre optic sensor interrogators. Silicon photonics is also very cost-effective, which makes fibre optic sensing affordable for a wide range of new markets and applications and facilitates universal and continues monitoring of structures”, commented Karsten Verhaegen, CEO of Sentea.
“Sentea builds on state-of-the-art silicon photonics technology IP that has been developed at the Photonics Research Group of imec and the UGent for the past 20 years, a technology in which both organisations are perceived as world-leading,” added Luc Van den hove, pPresident and Chief Executive Officer at imec. “This firm technology base will provide Sentea a kick-start to develop its sensor technology that is answering an existing need in a broad range of market segments.”
