Stone Assistance

Stone Assistance is a Spin-Off of University of Mons (Belgium) created in order to valorize results of research and development projects undergone in the Civil Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering for the stone industry from the extraction of the stone in quarries to its application in civil engineering and patrimonial restoration. Two main activities are offered by Stone Assistance : 1- the physico-mechanical characterization of geomaterials based on unconventional testing methodology on small size samples that are not suitable to perform standard tests. 2- advice to operators in the stone processing to help them optimizing the energy consumption and increasing the productivity by (i) a perfect characterization the intrinsic properties of the materials,(ii) the understanding of the destruction mechanisms with diamonds tools used for rock drilling and cutting and the optimization of the tools the monitoring, the control and the automation of the machines. Stone Assistance is currently working on the development of a testing laboratory equipped with different cutting machines in order to bring his competences to companies which are interested in solving engineering problems and increasing performances on machines used in the stone industry.