Neutral Equilibirum Mechanisms and smart Lightweight FooTbridges for urban ecomobility – NEMELIFT

Waterways have contributed to the prosperity of most current large cities. Nowadays they hinder the use of soft modes of transport, a key issue of urban ecomobility of the City of Tomorrow. The construction costs of crossing structures and annoyances caused by urban worksites inhibit communities in their attempts to densify the networks devoted to these means of transport.
Professor Shih’s Taiwanese team has highlighted the concept of “Virtual Pier”, an innovative technology to improve the performances of traditional bridge structures. This technology makes the construction of conventional pier unnecessary. This offers a number of benefits as the construction of concrete pier is time-consuming, resource-intensive and has high ecological impact.
In order to generalize these “smart” bridges, fast to install and able to adapt to the applied load, this work aims to develop the numerical tools (including a digital twin) necessary to design, validate and maintain these innovative bridges.