Institut Fresnel

MARIE SKŁODOWSKA-CURIE INNOVATIVE TRAINING NETWORKS

INSPIRE : "Innovative Ground Interface Concepts for Structure Protection"

The goal of INSPIRE is to foster a new generation of highly qualified researchers and engineers able to implement novel soil-foundation-structure 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.
INSPIRE relies on recent innovative scientific and technological concepts, mainly developed within the broad concept of meta-materials – natural or artificial materials or structures which exhibit extraordinary properties for inhibiting or conditioning wave propagation in all spatial directions over broad frequency bands. General developments of meta-materials will be combined or enriched with novel absorption and isolation concepts (i.e negative effective mass and stiffness moduli media, novel friction vibro-impact rocking motion based non-linear mechanisms) with the goal to overcome the limitations of the existing seismic and low-frequency isolation technologies and deliver highly-damped, low maintenance and easily implemented designs.
This network is led by National Technical University of Athens and consists of 7 European universities (Univ. of Trento, ETH, Univ. of Lille, Technical University of Keiserslauten, Univ. of Mons, Univ of Bologna) 1 Research Institute (Institut Fresnel of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) as well as 5 industrial partners (RINAC, FIP, ADT, IGF, GRSc).

13 Partners :
 NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, Coordinateur
 UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO
 EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
 CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE (CNRS)
 UNIVERSITE DE LILLE
 TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF KAISERSLAUTERN
 UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA
 UNIVERSITY OF MONS
 RINAC CONSULTING S.P.A.
 FIP MEC
 ADT-OMEGA CONSULTING ENGINEERS S.A
 INGENIEURGESELLSCHAFT DR.-ING. FISCHBACH MBH
 GROUP SCIENCE

Objectives of ESR04 - Institut Fresnel :
 1- Design a seismic wave cloaking approach using conformal and non-euclidean elastodynamic tools, able to be implemented in practice with appropriate columns distributed in a soft soil (see figure for preliminary results).
 2- Verify the results with Time-domain numerical simulations using a finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) software and frequency-domain simulations with a finite element software to geometries surrounding the buildings, as well as to geometrical constraints of the surrounding soil terrains.

Expected Results of ESR04 :
 1- A new concept of a cloak/waveguide
 2- New numerical tools for non-linear transformation elasto-dynamics, taking into account arbitrary soil geometries

Planned secondments :

• TREVI/geotechnical engineering (3 months)
• JRC/Seismic protection(2 months)
• UNITN/modelling of elastic media (1 month)

Contact :
 Sébastien Guenneau, Team EPSILON
 European Cordis platform on ITN INSPIRE