What can an average freshman boast by May? Not expelled - thanks God! Understood how the higher education works — well done! Ivan Perminov, a 1st-year student of the Department of Construction and Technology of Radio Electronic Devices, Faculty of Radio Engineering and Electronics NSTU NETI, in a team with a third-year student Alexander Trofimov developed a device that determines the depth of ground freezing. Their mentor was Alexey Bizyaev, a senior teacher of the same department, the head of the student design bureau Prometheus.
Alexey Bizyaev: "For the student design bureau Prometheus, it's no surprise that just a first-year student became the author of the development. Our office has all the conditions for developing the potential of those who want to study. As the head of the design bureau, I consider it my duty to provide them with everything they need. For example, Ivan Smirniagin, now a graduate of the REED Master's program, the winner of the Gold Medal at the International Salon of Inventions for the development that predicts the rocks collapse at mining enterprises, started working at Prometheus from the 1st year."
Ivan Perminov took up the task associated with permafrost shifting to the north due to global warming. A number of areas of the Far North face unusual phenomena: the ground warms up leading to the foundation of buildings cracking and unevenly subsiding. When the pipes supports begin to sink into the ground, there appear cracks on the walls of structures, fuel tanks deformation or pipelines rupture. The notorious story of the oil spill in Norilsk may well be the result of "ground subsidence" leading to the destruction of the tank installed on the platform which lost the foundation stability.
To avoid failures, special zonal freezing columns are used: nitrogen or frion are fed into the wells around the foundation and the temperature in the ground is leveled. But now such columns are used only in summer rather not to prevent, but to eliminate the consequences of permafrost thawing. Prompt response to temperature changes requires data on the ground freezing depth. The data can be provided by Ivan Perminov's device. If the device is a part of the complex, it can warn in advance about thawing and automatically turn on freezing, which will prevent environmental disasters among other things.
"Before I started solving the problem, I studied the current situation," says the developer. "Today there are analog systems that monitor the level of ground freezing, but they need constant human maintenance. The temperature data is written to the CD-cards that need to be changed. To read the information from the cards, you need a special equipment. Obviously, any prompt response is out of question, since there is no real time tracking of the soil freezing and thawing degree.
Our device, on the contrary, has all the advantages for monitoring the depth of freezing in real time and prompt response from anywhere in the world. The device operates both from the mains and from the battery. In addition, there is a special application that monitors the temperature and retrieves the information from the database in any place where there is an Internet connection»