by Brianna Crandall — April 9, 2012—With the large number of tall buildings that are in the works for coming years, both wind movement and earthquake damage are an increasing concern for architects and engineers, construction professionals, facilities owners and occupants. A special report in theStar.com, which is based in Toronto, Ontario, highlights a significant new development from Kinetica Dynamics Inc. designed to mitigate both of these concerns.
University of Toronto graduate Michael Montgomery and his supervisor Professor Constantin Christopoulos have developed a new “damping brace” to improve building resiliency in place of the accepted practice of making tall buildings extra stiff and often topping them with a concrete slab weighing several hundred tons.
The potentially game-changing device, known as the Wind-Earthquake Coupling Damper, consists of multiple layers of viscoelastic material alternating between layers of steel plates. It is roughly two meters long, just over a half meter wide, and a half meter deep. The device replaces some of the coupling beams at strategic locations, anchoring horizontally to the structural walls without taking up any valuable leasable space.
The developers say the first dampers could be installed in a tower under construction in Toronto by the end of 2013.
