José M. Adam has obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant, one of the most prestigious grants from the European Research Council, endowed with 2.5 million euros, to carry out a project that will help build safer and more robust buildings, avoiding the progressive collapse of its structure due to terrorist attacks, natural disasters or other extreme events.
This type of collapse is always accompanied by significant material and human losses, so the ‘Endure’ project will help prevent them. It is a “radical” proposal for the design of buildings, based on segmenting them and joining the different parts with structural fuses, in order to avoid the propagation of failures throughout the construction.
This new philosophy is similar to how electrical grids protect themselves against overloads, by connecting segments of the network using electrical fuses. In this case, the structural fuses would prevent the progressive collapse of a building in the face of an external threat such as an explosion or collisions with its structure.
More information:
http://www.upv.es/noticias-upv/noticia-12535-proyecto-endur-es.html