Project description
How rubber can make buildings earthquake-resilient
In earthquake-prone areas, reinforced concrete buildings often suffer severe damage. This is not due to structural collapse, but from their weakest link: the masonry infills. Even minor tremors can crack these non-structural walls, causing injuries, costly repairs, and long-term vulnerability. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the RUJOI project is tackling this problem with a simple but smart idea: rubber. By developing low-cost, flexible rubber joints made from recycled compounds, researchers aim to cushion masonry infills during seismic events while boosting overall building resilience. The project combines cutting-edge lab testing and simulation to make safer, more adaptable buildings a reality, paving the way for resilient cities and communities in a shifting world.
Objective
The RUJOI project aims to introduce a new paradigm for the design of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings by developing low-cost, flexible, and highly dissipative rubber joints for protecting the masonry infills and enhancing the global structural performance of the RC frame.
Many past and recent earthquake-induced disasters have shown that masonry infills are highly vulnerable components of RC buildings, undergoing damage even under minor earthquakes, and causing casualties and significant economic losses.
Flexible rubber joints, recently emerged as effective devices for protecting the infills, have also the potential to provide enough energy dissipation capabilities to minimise the RC frame damage and increase the building resilience to earthquakes.
The RUJOI project aims to unlock the potential of rubber joints through a combination of experimental and numerical research. Work will be carried out in collaboration with Tun Abdul Razak Research Center (TARRC), a world-leading research center in anti-seismic rubber-based devices, to reduce the cost and improve the performance of the joints, by introducing unvulcanized and recycled rubber compounds.
Moreover, a novel 3D macro-element modelling strategy for masonry infill walls with joints will be developed and validated in collaboration with University of Catania. The proposed strategy, implemented in advanced nonlinear structural software, will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the joints in reducing the seismic vulnerability and losses for typical infilled RC buildings in Europe and worldwide. This will help to quantify the benefits of introducing the rubber joints in increasing the resilience of masonry-infilled RC buildings in areas with different seismic hazard levels, in line with the EU’s objectives of Resilient and Secure Smart Cities and Disaster Resilient Society. Finally, simplified design tools will be developed, allowing the exploitation of the research outcomes by practitioners.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology seismology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
G1 1XQ Glasgow
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.