Want to construct earthquake resistant buildings: IIT Mandi has solution for you
The Community News/Shimla
As the devastating earthquakes in Syria, Nepal and other countries of the world have people fearing for safety, IIT Mandi has come up with new tech to construct earthquake resistant buildings.
A team of researchers from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Mandi led by Dr Arpan Gupta has found new material and the study has been published in Scientific Reports journal.
Gupta has proposed a 2D metamaterial-based foundation to protect and construct earthquake resistant buildings.
Talking about the research, Gupta said, “By intelligently designing a building’s, the earthquake waves can be diverted/reflected back, without causing much damage to the building.
Any building requires a good foundation, but the key here is to have periodicity in the foundation design, known as Metamaterial Foundation.
Such periodic variation of material properties can lead to reflection of waves thereby protecting the building structure on that foundation.”
Gupta and his team used two-dimensional metamaterials for this purpose.
A metamaterial is created by assembling multiple elements made from composite materials like metals and plastics, usually arranged in repeating patterns that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they affect, such as earthquake vibrations or seismic waves.
Seismic waves are elastic waves that transport energy through the Earth’s layers.
Unlike other types of physical waves, seismic waves have long wavelengths and low frequencies.
The investigation of metamaterials for seismic waves is a relatively new and highly complex field.
The research team studied a foundation consisting of repeating circular scatterers made of steel and lead embedded in a rubber matrix.
The concept of a 2D-metamaterial-based foundation for earthquake protection was tested on a computer model.
A computer model of the foundation along with the building structure was subjected to earthquake excitations.
Two cases were considered – concrete foundation and metamaterial foundation.
In the case of concrete foundation, large vibrations were recorded, while in the case of metamaterial foundation – very minimal vibrations were observed.
The research indicates that the composite periodic foundation achieves satisfactory wave attenuation from 2.6 Hz to 7.8 Hz.
This broad and low-frequency band gap is a noteworthy advancement that could assist in the creation of future metamaterial foundations for earthquake mitigation purposes.
This study presents a significant step forward in the development of earthquake-resistant buildings.
The metamaterial foundation can help reduce damage to structures and offer protection to people living in earthquake-prone regions of the world.
If applied correctly, it has the potential to revolutionise the way we think about building foundations and could lead to significant advances in earthquake protection.
