Author: Lorenzo Raffaele

The HyPer SMM project has come to an end. Now, Lorenzo has moved to Politecnico di Torino, and, together with von Karman Institute and Optiflow Company, kicked off the new multidisciplinary international project PROTEECT – PROtection Technologies from Eolian Events for Coastal Territories.

Ongoing climatic changes have increased the frequency and magnitude of wind storms along coastal regions in extra-tropical regions, Europe included. Such events impact on both building environment and human activities (e.g. transport infrastructures, buildings, urban areas), and coastal ecological system (e.g. tall trees, coastal dunes).

The PROTEECT project aims at reducing the physical vulnerability of the exposed elements through the conceptual design and development of eco-friendly mitigation measures, and their performance assessment by means of computational simulations, wind tunnel tests and in-situ measurements. Politecnico di Torino (IT), together with von Karman Institute (BE) and Optiflow Company (FR), ensure the complementary, interdisciplinary and intersectoral skills needed to achieve the objectives in an international dimension.

The project is grounded on the European projects SMaRT (H2020/MSCA/ITN/EID) and HyPer SMM (H2020/MSCA/IF, www.hypersmm.vki.ac.be) celebrated by EU, focused on consistent and preparatory green topics.

The Wind-Sand Tunnel Test dataset employed in the HyPer SMM paper Raffaele et al (2022) “Life-Cycle Performance and Cost Analysis of Sand Mitigation Measures: Toward a Hybrid Experimental-Computational Approach” Journal of Structural Engineering (ASCE) was published in Open Access on Zenodo (OpenAIRE) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

You can find and download it at the following links:
https://zenodo.org/record/6566065#.Yot5dahBw74
https://zenodo.org/record/6550879#.Yot5E6hBw74

If you want to know more, you can download the article by clicking on the following preview:

The second journal paper published in the framework of the HyPer SMM project has been published on Journal of Structural Engineering by ASCE.
This study deals with an hybrid methodology to assess the life cycle performance and cost of Sand Mitigation Measures by coupling Wind-Sand Tunnel Tests and Wind-Sand Computational Simulations.

If you want to know more, you can download the article by clicking on the following preview:

Our first paper published on Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics “Wind-sand tunnel testing of surface-mounted obstacles: Similarity requirements and a case study on a Sand Mitigation Measure” is among the most downloaded papers of the journal in the last 90 days (now at 9th place, click here to download).

To take a look at more interesting articles, visit the website of Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics.

“Horizon, The EU Research & Innovation Magazine” on behalf of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation talks about the H2020 MSCA ongoing and completed projects Hybrid Performance assessment of Sand Mitigation Measures (HyPer SMM) and Sand Mitigation around Railway Tracks (SMaRT) with the article “Saving railways from sand” .
Enjoy reading it!

The first journal paper published in the framework of the HyPer SMM project has been published on Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics by Elsevier.
This study deals with similarity criteria for Wind-Sand Tunnel Tests of surface mounted obstacles, such as Sand Mitigation Measures, by outlining strengths and weaknesses.

If you want to know more, you can download the article by clicking on the following preview:

Even of the first Wind Tunnel campaign of HyPer SMM has just finishes, I would like to introduce you to he HyPer SMM project from the VKI L1-B Wind Tunnel test section.

I am looking forward to next wind-sand tunnel tests!

The first Wind Tunnel campaign of HyPer SMM has just finished!

While I am postprocessing the huge amount of data we acquired, I would like to share a small video captured with a GoPro inside the test section.
Windblown sand saltation is amazing!

The jury of the ANIV Award 2020 unanimously remitted the Top Award to Lorenzo Raffaele for the paper Windblown sand action on civil structures: Definition and probabilistic modelling. The Award is remitted at the IN-VENTO conference for a scientific paper on Wind Engineering written by a young researcher.

The papers by:

– Andrea Giachetti, Two-dimensional study of a rectangular cylinder with a forebody airtight screen at a small distance

– Tommaso Massai, The effect of angle of attack on flow-induced vibration of low-side-ratio rectangular cylinders

received special mentions.