Improving Urban Seismic Resilience through Vibrating Barriers

Earthquakes are a well known natural hazard to urban environments. According to [2] under certain conditions, building vibrations significantly decrease when the mu l t iple interactions between the soil layers and all the buildings present in a city are considered in the analysis (site city interaction phenomenon). The present study focuses on the analysis of the multiple interactions between the soil and a city through 3D finite element models (FEM). The infl uence of the topography, buildings distributions, types of buildings (different resonant freque ncies) and spatial incoherency of the seismic motion will be also studied. Moreover, [1]proposed the idea of a novel device named vibrating barrier (ViBa) as a viable option to reduce the vibrations of adjacent buildings by exploiting the well known soil structure interaction phenomenon (SSI). The implementation of the ViBa device will be undertaken in a simplified FEM of an existing city as a way to enhance the resilience of the urban environment under seismic ground motion. References [1] P. Cacciola and A. Tombari, 2015. Vibrating barrier: a novel device for the passive control of structures under ground motion. Proc Math Phys Eng Sci, 471, 20150075.[2] M. Kham, J. F, Semblat, P. Y. Bard, P. Dangla, 2006. Seismic site-city interaction: Main governing phenomena through simplified numerical models. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 96, 1934-1951