News

Journal paper published on Wind & Structures

The third journal paper in the framework of the HyPer SMM project has been published on journal of Wind & Structures by Techno-Press.
This study deals with the wind-sand tunnel test of a sinusoidal hill and its performance assessment as a Sand Mitigation Measure. Obtained performance are compared with different Sand Mitigation Measures from the existing literature.
The tests were carried out in the L-1B wind tunnel facility of von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.

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

Keynote lecture @ EACWE2022

We are pleased to announce that, during the 8th European-African Conference on Wind Engineering, Jeroen delivered a keynote lecture entitled Wind engineering for beach houses & offshore wind farms. Within the keynote, he presented the work carried out at von Karman Institute in the framework of HyPer SMM research project. We would like to thank the Organizing Committee for their invitation and interest in the topic of sand mitigation.

Beyond HyPer SMM!

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.

HyPer SMM data in published in Open Access

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:

 

2nd journal paper published on JSE

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:

HyPer SMM @ Building Coastal Resilience 2022

The HyPer SMM research project participated to the very first conference on nature based solutions for coastal protection in Belgium.
The “Dune in front of a dike: International Conference” took place at KU Leuven Bruges Campus on 12 and 13 April 2022.
During the event, the study entitled “Hybrid Performance assessment of Sand Mitigation Measures for Coastal and Desert applications” was presented.
The abstract can be downloaded by visiting the Building Coastal Resilience 2022 webpage.

HyPer SMM @ VKI Seminar Seires

On March 16th 2022, the second HyPer SMM seminar took place online. The seminar was addressed to researchers and students enrolled at VKI and to external researchers thanks to online broadcasting. It has been delivered in the framework of the VKI Seminar Series.

The aim of the HyPer SMM seminars is to disseminate windblown sand modelling and mitigation methodologies to MSc, PhDs and researchers.

Slides can be downloaded from the following link:

VKIseminar

HyPer SMM @ Science is Wonderful!

The HyPer SMM project participated to Science is Wonderful! An event dedicated about bringing pupils and researchers together.
Meeting and disseminating my work to an high school class from Caserta (Italy) was wonderful!
I hope to have the pleasure to meet them again and disseminate my experience to other classes in Europe and around the world.
I thank the teacher Teresita Gravina from Caserta and EU commission for this amazing opportunity.

Lorenzo
👉 http://www.scienceiswonderful.eu

European Researchers Night

HyPer SMM participated the European Researcher Night (Wise Night) in Brussels on 25 September 2019, in the beautiful setting of the Planetarium, an historic landmark where research has been conducted for almost two centuries.

Lorenzo disseminated to a broad audience how fascinating the work of the researcher is, and how experimental tests in the wind tunnel, mathematics, physics and computer simulations contribute all together to develop effective mitigation solutions against windblown sand.

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Published papers trending

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.

 

HyPer SMM on “Horizon: the EU Research & Innovation magazine”

“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!

HyPer SMM @ COMPDYN 2021

The HyPer SMM research project participated to the 8th International Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering with a study entitled “Life-Cycle Performance and Cost Analysis of Sand Mitigation Measures: Towards an hybrid experimental-computational approach”.
The abstract can be downloaded at the following link:

1st journal paper published on JWEIA

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:

HyPer SMM @ EGU General Assembly 2021

The HyPer SMM research project participated to the European Geophysical Union General assembly 2021 with a study entitled “Characterization of windblown sand transport in open field conditions through wind-sand tunnel testing and computational simulation”.
The abstract can be downloaded at the following link: EGU21-9574-print

 

1st HyPer SMM seminar

On January 28th 2021, the first HyPer SMM seminar planned took place online. The seminar was addressed to students enrolled to the VKI Research Master in Fluid Dynamics and delivered in the context of the Methodology of Applied Fluid Dynamics course.

The aim of the HyPer SMM seminars is to disseminate windblown sand modelling and mitigation techniques to MSc, PhDs and Researchers at VKI.

Slides can be downloaded from the following link:

MSCA-IF Info Meeting

On December 16th 2020, the first MSCA-IF Info Meeting took place online. The aim of the meeting is to disseminate and to encourage MSCA-IF applications to PhDs, Postdocs and Research Engineers at VKI.

During the meeting I illustrated the general guidelines to apply to MSCA-IF actions, the evaluation process, and my past experience in writing the proposal by sharing some insights.

I would like to thank all participants for their availability and strong interest in the event.

ANIV Top Award 2020

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.