Research database

In European seismic risk regions, including much of the Alpine region, most buildings have been designed without provisions for earthquake resistance or with codes for low-moderate seismicity, posing significant risk to a high percentage of the population. Mountain architecture, therefore, requires interventions that reduce its vulnerability, and consequently also risks of socio-economic losses, but without distorting its original characteristics and favoring sustainable solutions. These buildings also have very low energy performance and high energy costs energy management, as they have been built before EU/national standards that govern energy savings, introduced starting since the 70s. Compared to privately owned built heritage, most public buildings have more stringent regulatory constraints on structural and seismic safety. Along these lines, the objective of OPTIMISE is to exploit sustainable materials to improve the standards of buildings in mountain areas by combining the seismic energy dissipation capacity with thermal insulation. In this regard, new algorithm based computational design processes will be developed to optimize the use of a very particular property of some mechanical systems, bistability, where dissipation is controlled via the dynamics of the metamaterial’s unstable behaviour. Finding the set of optimal configurations of the metamaterial and its internal components will involve the use of parametric or combinatorial design using optimization techniques based on topology optimization and machine learning. Finally, digital twin and multiphysics modelling will allow us to involve and enhance materials such as wood, fabrics, alloys and their combinations, for the creation of seismically and thermally efficient panels and building envelopes, thus proposing new eco-sustainable, reversible and architecture-friendly retrofit systems.