Vibrating Barriers for the control of seismic waves (ViBa)

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 vibration-control 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.

It is expected that outside of the academic research community the main short term beneficiaries of the project will be the Nuclear Industry via the industrial partner, LaMSID/EDF. The industry will firstly benefit from the development of software and numerical procedures for the study of the structure-soil-structure interaction, a topic of rapidly growing interest for nuclear power plants. Furthermore, the technology developed for reducing vibration through the ViBa offers an alternative strategy for protecting existing power plants that might otherwise require costly refurbishment or seismic improvement.
The technology for ViBas requires industrial manufacturing. Therefore it is expected that in the mid-term the outcomes of the research will impact the Vibration Control Industry, fostering industrial and research development through the commercialization of the novel devices. Furthermore, as the proposed study is strongly related to the wider topic of reducing soil vibrations including those caused by trains, traffic and construction work, it will also impact on the academic and industrial community in areas unrelated to seismic studies. The creation of a new technology with a number of different applications will also foster the global economic performance and economic competitiveness of UK Industry.
The proposed research aims to control the soil vibrations caused by earthquakes. This is an ongoing issue of public safety of great significance to human life. People living in seismically vulnerable cities, or living in developing countries and/or in historic cities where current seismic protection technologies are unfeasible will benefit from the proposed research. This innovative strategy to protect cities from earthquakes will necessarily impact on policy-makers, the public sector and government agencies since structure protection will be managed non-locally given that it moves seismic protection from the structure to the soil. This might be considered the project's longest term impact.