Fondazione Pesenti supporting innovative start-ups.
February 2021 – ISAAC Antisismica, the start-up that won the SHaReD call in February 2019 (launched by Fondazione Pesenti with Speed MI Up, the incubator of Bocconi University, to reward innovative ideas in the field of disaster and environmental emergency management), is ready to intentionally “trigger” the ISAAC earthquake on two buildings constructed at the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (Eucentre) in Pavia.
ISAAC Earthquake is the experimental campaign aimed at assessing the effectiveness of I-Pro 1, the first compact seismic protection system for existing buildings. During a seismic event, I-Pro 1 minimizes structural oscillations by generating counter-forces at the roof level of the building, capable of counteracting the effects of the earthquake, thereby reducing the risk of damage and collapse.
During the test, two reinforced concrete buildings with brick infill walls—one equipped with I-Pro 1 and the other without—will be subjected to “artificial earthquakes” in order to compare the effects of increasingly intense seismic events and the resulting damage to the two structures. To ensure accurate results, the two models have been designed, constructed, and anchored to the seismic base in an identical way and subjected to the same sequence of “shocks.”
The standard in seismic engineering is to numerically analyze and simulate, through computational software, the seismic improvement provided to a building by interventions aimed at modifying its structural response (reinforcements, isolators, dampers, etc.), without ever experimentally verifying their actual effectiveness during an earthquake. ISAAC has decided to go further by testing the behavior of its technology, ISAAC Protection 1 (I-Pro 1), by intentionally triggering simulated earthquakes in the laboratory.
photo courtesy https://www.facebook.com/ISAACantisismica
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