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New PhD Grad, Professor Form Building Technology Company

Michael Montgomery (Katherine Carney/University of Toronto)

Michael Montgomery (Katherine Carney/University of Toronto)

An engineering professor and recent PhD graduate at University of Toronto have developed a technology to protect tall buildings from high winds and earthquakes, and started a company to take the technology to market. Civil engineering professor Constantin Christopoulos and recent Ph.D. Michael Montgomery (pictured left) developed the technology over 10 years, and founded Kinetica Dynamics in Toronto to commercialize their research.

Christopoulos’s research interests include structural dynamics affecting the design of buildings to resist seismic forces and dissipate energy. Montgomery’s doctoral research studied a process called damping that absorbs vibrations from high winds or earthquakes and turns them into heat. Working in Christopoulos’s lab, Montgomery tested and validated a technology that distributes damping throughout a building, using a viscoelastic material — similar to the adhesive on an office sticky note — bonded to steel.

This technology helps meet a need by developers and architects seen in many urban centers experiencing building booms. Commercial real estate developers want taller buildings to house more offices and residences put on the same-sized land parcels as the smaller buildings they replace. Developers also want to offer more open and airy spaces, which runs into the need for more structural support required for these taller structures.

Construction codes in many cities call for buildings to absorb anticipated wind and earthquake vibrations, which often mean more numerous or thicker walls, or massive roof-top supports taking up valuable space. The solution devised by Christopoulos and Montgomery offers an alternative: the damper absorbs vibrations from wind and, in the case of an earthquake, concentrates damage in specific portions of the damper that are easily replaced. The damper system is designed to replace concrete beams in the building and thus does not displace any usable — i.e., leasable — space.

The engineers call their technology the Wind-Earthquake (W-EQ) Coupling Damper, and market the system though their start-up company Kinetica Dynamics. The university’s Innovations and Partnerships Office secured patents on the technology and provided commercialization support for the venture. Montgomery is the company’s CEO, which operates from the university’s Institute for Optical Sciences, an incubator for new businesses.

The following video shows the damper in simulated vibration tests.

 

Read more: University Spinoff Designs Virtual Reality for Architects

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