Vibrating Barriers for the control of seismic waves (ViBa)

诸如隔离器、阻尼器和调谐质量阻尼器的装置现在广泛用于建筑行业的地震工程，以减少新建筑物和在少数情况下现有建筑物的振动。然而，振动控制装置的使用仅限于单个结构，因此过于局部化，无法提供更大规模的地震保护，这仍然是一个尚未解决的挑战，特别是在发展中国家。最近的灾难，如2009年的拉奎拉、2010年的海地和2010年的智利灾难，证明了基于振动控制设备的战略在保护历史街区和城市方面可以实现的潜在好处。拟议的研究旨在首次引入创新设备，以减少地震作用引起的一组结构的振动。这将允许替代战略，以保护城市免受地震的影响，通过振动屏障（ViBa）减少地震引起的振动，这些屏障位于土壤中并与结构分离。振动屏障（Vibrating Barrier，简称Viba）是一种大型结构，用于在地震作用下减少现有结构的振动。因此，这里提出的方法代表了一个步骤的变化，在地震振动控制，通过考虑新的非局部化的解决方案，能够减少一组建筑物的振动。将通过理论、数值和实验研究确定ViBa的效率和有效性。

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.