INSPIRE - Innovative Ground Interface Concepts for Structure Protection
Project INSPIRE
The Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring (D-BAUG, ETH Zürich) and the Chair of Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering has recently been awarded an ITN Training Network grant (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018) called INSPIRE: Innovative Ground Interface Concepts for Structure Protection
external pageINSPIRE will incorporate recent scientific and technological breakthroughs, mainly developed within the broad concept of meta-materials, to propose and implement holistic and novel soil-foundation-structure concepts for the efficient protection of structures from ground induced hazards. Research will be channeled to:
- Interventions to the foundation soil (and not to the structure itself) intended to divert seismic waves or substantially attenuate the earthquake motion before exciting the structure.
- Broad-band isolation concepts incorporating negative stiffness inclusions and engineered microstructures of hyper-damping behavior aiming at high impact – infrastructure components.
- Urban scale soil-foundation-structure schemes integrating combinations of meta-concepts to provide seismic protection at a community level.
Associated Research Work
external pageINSPIRE foresees synergies of three different layers with complementary and overlapping functionalities aimed at protecting the structures from ground and airborne excitations.
META-SOIL
Design and demonstration of novel meta-material concepts for wave mitigation in soil. The first layer (“Meta-Soil”) foresees measures for treating the soil which circumscribes the structures, rendering the structures fully or partially isolated from the effect of the incident ground waves from all directions. “Meta-Soil” includes a spectrum of wave mitigation measures based on extended meta-material concepts, such as cloaks or properly designed pile arrays/”artificial forests”, which enable diversion of seismic and other low frequency waves, or advanced energy dissipation mechanisms, such as “rainbow traps”.
META-BASES
This layer applies and demonstrates novel meta-material and other related absorber concepts or the design of foundations and support systems to protect structures against broad-band excitation in all three spatial directions.
META-STRUCTURES
This final layer includes novel integrated design concepts for innovative high impact applications.
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Inspiring a new generation of scientists
external pageINSPIRE aims to foster a new generation of highly qualified researchers and engineers, which will create a critical mass kernel, trained to implement novel concepts for the efficient protection of structures from all ground induced hazards, including earthquakes and all other sources of low-frequency noise and vibration excitations.
New Concepts for Structural protection against Earthquake & Noise
INSPIRE aims to propose innovative scientific and technological concepts, mainly developed within the broad concept of meta-materials in order to:
To transcend the limitations of existing seismic protection methods and to extend noise protection in the low frequency range methodologies.
The notion of “meta-materials” refers to natural or artificial materials or structures which exhibit extraordinary properties for inhibiting or conditioning wave propagation in all spatial directions over broad frequency bands and are already finding successful technological applications for high frequency waves (electromagnetic, optical, thermal, ultra-sound), and for wavelengths limited at micro-/mesoscopic scales. These general developments of metamaterials will be further enriched and advanced through novel absorption and isolation concepts, such as negative effective mass and stiffness moduli media and structures, or novel friction and vibro-impact rocking motion based non-linear mechanisms.
