Ricerc@Sapienza

Moving Europe forward by building green, smart cities and buildings is of paramount importance in our modern technological and connected/inclusive society. With this in mind, the SmarT-uP project makes a step change in high-rise building design (expected to be the most common building typology in future congested urban areas) subjected to environmental- (e.g. wind-) induced vibrations, by introducing a new breed of tall/slender buildings with macro-scale energy harvesting capabilities for powering diffused wireless sensors provided for building automation (leading to an increment of the building sustainability) and/or for structural-health monitoring (leading to an increase of the building resilience). Specifically, the envisioned structures not only resist effectively wind loads, causing occupants¿ discomfort (loss of serviceability) or damage to non-structural components (loss of integrity) in tall buildings, but they exploit wind-induced vibrations to improve their performance in terms of carbon footprint. This is accomplished by developing piezoelectric-dampers (PiDs) for simultaneous structural elements connection and energy harvesting (EH). The developed PiDs are composite connections (piezoelectric+steel or rubber) engaged by wind-induced oscillations to dissipate the kinetic energy of the oscillating building by transforming it into electric energy stored for powering sensors. In this manner, a proper number of PiDs provided to a building will constitute, as a whole, a parallel power system for sensors¿ energy needs, which is self-powered, cable free (thanks to the wireless technology) and almost maintenance free (absence of cables). These innovative devices will be groundbreaking since they will be able to extend EH techniques from the (currently developed) micro (nano- milli-meters) and meso (centimeters) scales, to the (undeveloped) macro scale (meters).