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Content archived on 2024-06-16

Base-isolation technology for earthquake protection of cultural heritage

Objective

Base isolation is accepted worldwide as one of the most effective strategies for seismic protection of civil structures. The fundamental principle underlying base isolation involves decoupling the structure from the damaging horizontal ground motion, by means of additional flexibility and energy dissipation capability, thereby mitigating the severity of structural vibration and damage during a seismic event.

The effectiveness of this innovative technology ¿ typically used to protect the primary structural system in bridges, buildings and the infrastructure ¿paved the way for extending the concept to non-structural elements of strategic importance. Typical examples of non-structural elements include high-value building contents, mechanical and electrical equipment, computer servers, and irreplaceable museum artifacts.

The proposed research concerns the protection of museum artifacts against intensive ground shaking through the use of innovative seismic protective systems. Application of base isolation technology to individual artifacts is a viable alternative to seismically isolating the entire building ¿ a significantly more complex and expensive task. The project will concentrate on the evaluation of benefits, as well as ascertaining the limitations, of different types of seismic isolation systems.

The seismic performance of base-isolated block-like museum artifacts will be investigated through reliable numerical tools capable of correctly describing the behaviour of such systems. The subject research topic will have great potential for facilitating base isolation as a means of earthquake protection and structural conservation of cultural heritage.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP6-2004-MOBILITY-12
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

IRG - Marie Curie actions-International re-integration grants

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS
EU contribution
No data
Total cost
No data