Vibrating Barriers for the control of seismic waves (ViBa)

Cacciola, Pierfrancesco (2015) Vibrating Barriers for the control of seismic waves (ViBa). [Data Collection]

Project Description

Devices such as isolators, dampers and tuned mass dampers are now widely used in the construction industry for earthquake engineering to reduce vibration in new and, in a few cases, existing buildings. However, the use of vibrationcontrol devices is restricted to individual structures, and is therefore too localized to provide larger scale protection from seismic action, which remains an unsolved challenge, especially those in developing countries. Recent disasters, such as those in L'Aquila 2009, Haiti 2010 and Chile 2010 demonstrate the potential benefits that strategies based on vibration control devices could achieve in protecting historical quarters and cities. The proposed research aims to introduce for the first time innovative devices for reducing the vibrations of a group of structures due to seismic action. This will allow alternative strategies to protect cities from earthquakes by reducing the vibrations caused by earthquakes through vibrating barriers (ViBa) hosted in the soil and detached from structures. Vibrating barriers (ViBa) are massive structures tuned to reduce the vibrations of existing structures in the event of seismic action. The approach proposed here therefore represents a step change in seismic vibration control by considering novel non-localised solutions able to reduce the vibrations of a cluster of buildings. The efficiency and effectiveness of the ViBa will be established through theoretical, numerical and experimental studies.