A new building system, as reported in a paper published on May 15 in Nature, shows promise in limiting structural damage to specific areas during catastrophic events, potentially preventing the entire building from collapsing. Drawing inspiration from lizards' ability to shed their tails to evade predators, this method aims to contain damage within a designated region.
Buildings face various pressures that can lead to collapse, such as earthquakes, vehicle impacts, and construction errors, posing risks to human life. Current collapse prevention designs redistribute initial damage to intact structural components to prevent its spread. While effective, this approach may inadvertently result in total collapse.
Jose Adam and colleagues from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain introduced an architectural design akin to the fracture plane on a lizard's tail, allowing controlled breakage to isolate initial damage, akin to a lizard shedding its tail when under attack.
Known as "Hierarchical Collapse Isolation," this building system induces controlled fractures along predetermined edges, preventing initial damage from propagating throughout the entire structure, aiding in rescue efforts.
To test this hierarchical collapse isolation design, the research team constructed a two-story building measuring 15 meters by 12 meters, with each floor standing at 2.6 meters high, using prefabricated concrete.
Adam and the team conducted two rounds of testing on the building. The first round simulated minor initial damage by removing one of the two columns at the building's corner, confirming the design's ability to provide traditional structural support. The second round simulated more extreme initial damage by removing the remaining column at the corner. Through this test, the researchers observed that hierarchical collapse isolation successfully prevented total structural collapse, with only a portion of the building collapsing along the load path.
While these tests demonstrate the feasibility of hierarchical collapse isolation, Adam and colleagues emphasize the need for further testing before expanding this design to different types of buildings. Nonetheless, this approach could facilitate targeted reconstruction of collapsed building sections, potentially significantly reducing loss of life and aiding in rescue operations.
For more information, refer to the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07268-5
