ILC developing 'plug' to protect against flooding
The Kent County-based manufacturer responsible for outfitting the astronauts during NASA's Apollo Program is at it again, but this time they're not looking to the skies.
Instead, ILC Dover has gone underground.
The longtime company based near Frederica is entering into the final phase of testing on what can be best described as a giant inflatable plug built to prevent flooding caused by a terrorist attack on the nation's underground subway systems.
ILC Dover's Resilient Tunnel Plug technology is being developed for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Other spinoff technologies for flood mitigation are also being developed to protect against floods caused by climate change-driven storms or sea level rise.
The company was first approached by Homeland Security in 2008 with the idea, said Fran DiNuzzo, the company's Chief Executive Officer.
"Now we've heard of and come up with many ambitious objectives over the years," he said. "This request certainly fit the ambitious category."
Friday afternoon company officials, along with Dr. Reginald Brothers, under secretary for science and technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, officially opened a new test facility for the products near Frederica.
The facility, a full-scale replica of a subway tunnel developed at West Virginia University, is a hulking, hollow tube of concrete and metal hauled in parts from Morgantown, West Virginia.
It will be used to test products, including the plug, which is 32 feet long, 16 feet in diameter and 1,800 pounds when fully-inflated. When activated, unfolded and inflated, the plug could block up to 30 feet of water.
"...We're at a time of limited resources, but yet exponentially increasing threats," Brothers said. "What science technology allows us to do through innovation is to bridge that gap."
Years of development resulted in several iterations of the plug, which is made from a liquid crystal polymer fiber called Vectran. It also resulted in spinoff products, like flaps to cover vent shafts, stairwells, elevators and rail portals, that attracted the attention of New York City following Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Development of the plug wasn't easy. There's not a lot of room to work with when developing something that will be deployed in a confined space, like a subway tunnel, said Dr. John Fortune, Homeland Security Branch Chief of Science and Technology.
"Everything was always open-air before. You had to do this inside a tunnel and make it fit and make sure there weren't gaps, and that it seals tightly, and then deal with all of the requirements subway systems have," he said. "That's been a lot of the challenges of making this work."
The plug should hopefully be available by 2016. The other products are set to be ready by the 2015 hurricane season.
Contact Jon Offredo at (302) 678-4271, on Twitter @jonoffredo or at joffredo@delawareonline.com.