Media release

From: Springer Nature

Engineering: Lizard-inspired building system may prevent full-scale collapses (N&V)

A new system of construction that may prevent the collapse of an entire building by ensuring that — in the event of catastrophic damage — structural failure is localized to the damaged region is presented in a paper in Nature. The approach is inspired by lizards’ ability to shed their tail to escape predators.

Building collapses can arise from a variety of stressors, such as earthquakes, vehicle collisions and errors in construction, and may lead to loss of life. Current designs to avoid collapse usually rely on preventing an initial failure from spreading by redistributing it to the building’s intact structural components. However, this idea, although effective, may inadvertently pull the whole structure down altogether.

Jose Adam and colleagues present an approach for designing buildings that is meant to isolate an initial failure, similar to how lizard tails have a fracture plane to allow lizards to drop their tails when under attack. The building system — dubbed ‘hierarchy-based collapse isolation’ — would lead to a controlled fracture along predetermined borders in certain sections of the building to prevent the initial failure from propagating to the entirety of the building and so facilitating the rescue of any inhabitants.

To test the hierarchy-based collapse isolation design, the researchers constructed a 15 m × 12 m building with two 2.6-m-high floors using precast reinforced concrete. During the process, Adam and colleagues subjected the structure to two phases of testing. The first phase simulated a small initial failure in which two columns either side of one of the building’s corners were removed — this confirmed that the design offered the conventional structural support. The second phase simulated a much more extreme initial failure where the remaining corner column was removed. Through this testing, the researchers note that hierarchy-based collapse isolation successfully prevented the entirety of the structure from collapsing, with only a portion of the building failing along load paths.

Although these tests demonstrate the promise of hierarchy-based collapse isolation, Adam and colleagues note that more testing will be necessary before this design can be scaled up and implemented in different building types. However, hierarchy-based collapse isolation allows for the collapsed portions of buildings to be rebuilt as opposed to rebuilding the entire structure, and may substantially reduce loss of life and aid in rescue efforts.