BRITE Pivot: Advancing Knowledge in Water-Shell Structure Interaction Through Discovery of Efficient Hydrodynamic and Structural Thin-shell Forms

这一促进工程中变革性和公平性进步的研究想法(BRITE)轴心奖为有潜力在水-结构相互作用中导致科学发现的研究提供资金，以实现沿海恢复能力的创新方法。通向这些发现的道路建立和发展了一个新的领域--“水产养殖工程”，其代表是三个学科的整合：结构工程、海岸工程和建筑学。水产养殖工程的设计目标是海岸灾害工程(安全、耐久和坚固)、结构艺术(高效、经济和美观)和可持续性(低环境影响)。在最好的情况下，水产养殖工程等同于适应性水产养殖，其特点是无/低遗憾策略(在预测的未来气候下相对较低的成本和较大的收益)，并具有共同效益(服务于一个以上目的)。研究成果有利于社会，使沿海结构的坚固设计成为可能，同时通过薄壳形式使用较少的质量，以及可能更优雅、对社区和生态系统的干扰更少的设计。在结构工程领域，大量的研究已经证明了薄壳结构形式的显著强度，其中壳是指固有的几何曲率，而薄是指大跨厚比。研究目标是通过使用水动力分析、有限元结构分析和机器学习工具等综合方法，通过提高水-壳结构相互作用的基本知识，实现水产养殖工程和适应性水产养殖设计目标。具体地说，这项研究将发现高效的水动力薄壳结构形式，这些结构形式在海岸弹性方面具有广泛的应用，例如海堤、防洪堤、浮动防波堤、沿海桥梁和沿海建筑立面。由于薄壳结构容易受到破碎波的危险脉冲(冲击)力的影响，数值方法包括基于拉格朗日的多相(水和空气)光滑质点水动力(SPH)模型。这些复杂的模型将通过小尺度和大尺度的实验计划进行验证。机器学习方法将被用来(1)在给定波浪特性的情况下得到有效的结构薄壳形式，(2)建立这些形式上的波浪压力的预测方程。总体而言，该项目将增进关于有图案的薄壳结构形状/形式与(非)破碎波浪力之间的关系的知识。此外，这项研究建立了一个新的跨学科领域，并展示了一种寻找优化海岸结构形式和预测波浪压力方程的综合方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Pivot award funds research that has the potential to lead to scientific discoveries in water-structure interaction to enable innovative approaches to coastal resilience. The path to these discoveries establishes and grows a new field, “aquatectural engineering,” which is represented by an integration of three disciplines: structural engineering, coastal engineering, and architecture. The design goals of aquatectural engineering are those of coastal hazard engineering (safety, durability, and robustness), structural art (efficiency, economy, and elegance), and sustainability (low environmental impact). At its best, aquatectural engineering equals adaptable aquatecture, which is characterized by no/low regret strategies (relatively low cost and large benefits under predicted future climates) and has co-benefits (serves more than one purpose). The research outcomes benefit society by enabling robust designs of coastal structures while using less mass via thin-shell forms, and designs that are potentially more elegant and less intrusive to the community and ecosystem. In the field of structural engineering, a plethora of studies have demonstrated the significant strength of thin-shell structural forms, where “shell” refers to the inherent geometric curvature, and “thin” refers to the large span-to-thickness ratio. The research objective is to enable aquatectural engineering and adaptable aquatecture design goals through the advancement of fundamental knowledge in water-shell structure interaction using integrative approaches: hydrodynamic analyses, finite element structural analyses, and machine learning tools. Specifically, the research will discover efficient hydrodynamic thin-shell structural forms that have broad application to coastal resilience such as seawalls, flood barriers, floating breakwaters, coastal bridges, and coastal building facades, for example. Since thin-shell structures could be susceptible to dangerous impulse (impact) forces of breaking waves, the numerical approach includes Lagrangian-based multiphase (water and air) smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) models. These complex models will be validated with experimental programs at small scale and large scale. Machine learning methods will be used to (1) arrive at efficient structural thin-shell forms given wave characteristics and (2) develop predictive equations for the wave pressure on these forms. Overall, the project will advance knowledge in the relationship between patterned thin-shell structural shapes/forms and (non)breaking wave forces. In addition, this research establishes a new interdisciplinary field, and demonstrates an integrative approach to find optimized coastal structure forms and predictive wave pressure equations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.