IPFS News Link • Japan - Earthquake Tsunami Radiation
Japanese Home-Levitation System Could Protect Buildings From Earthquakes
• Rebecca Boyle via PopSci.comInstead of building super-strong yet flexible structures to withstand earthquakes, what if you built your house to levitate on a cushion of air? This is already being employed in Japan, a little less than a year after the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country.
The levitation system is the brainchild of a company called Air Danshin Systems Inc., which the Japanese-culture-and-art site Spoon & Tamago says roughly translates to “anti-seismic.” It was founded in 2005 but has caught on after the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
It consists of a sensor network, an air compressor and an artificial second foundation beneath the home’s bottom level and just above the ground. An earthquake-sensitive motion sensor recognizes when the earth is unstable, and an air compressor activates within half a second to fill the space between the building and the ground. It can lift a structure 1.2 inches off the ground, according to a report in DigitalTrends.
2 Comments in Response to Japanese Home-Levitation System Could Protect Buildings From Earthquakes
Clearly the safest place to be in an earthquake is in the air.
But, I wonder if the woman's platform shown in the video was already on an air layer and not the "1/2 second after initiation of" the rocking.
I would be concerned with a few things: 1. The air compressor must be attached to the house, not the ground. It must survive the fraction of a second rocking before the house lifts off the ground. 2. It must run on a battery power since utility supplied power may fail during the earthquake. 3. While half a second to detect and respond to an earthquake is realistic, I am not sure how long it would take to lift a house on a cushion of air. That is a lot of rocking in between the system must survive. 4. Lastly, how well will it work over a liquifactional surface during the earthquake? Can it actually push against such a phenomenon? And do cracks opening and closing below the house present another problematic phenomenon?