Slashdot Mirror
Japan Creates Earthquake-Proof Levitating House System
An anonymous reader writes "Japanese company Air Danshin Systems Inc. has developed an innovative system that levitates houses in the in the event of an earthquake to protect them from structural damage. When an earthquake hits, a sensor responds within one second by activating a compressor, which forces an incredible amount of air under the home, pushing the structure up and apart from its foundation. The air pressure can keep the home levitating up to 3cm from the shaking foundation below. In the wake of last year's Fukushima disaster the company is set to install the levitation system in 88 houses across Japan."
The house is not firmly attached to the foundations except by this glorified airbag.
Don't they also get typhoons there?
I eagerly await the Japanese sequel to the Wizard of Oz.......
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Depends... housing ain't cheap in Japan, and getting a new one may be hellishly expensive when compared to keeping your old one from coming apart.
Also, what's easier, saving the house (and everything in it), or rebuilding from scratch? It's not just the cost of the house you have to keep in mind, but the cost of all the stuff in it, and the expense + time spent living out of a hotel room (or with relatives) until your house gets rebuilt.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And with the added benefit of not being crushed to death by rubble in the process!
Add up the weight, washer, dryer, fridge, stove, counter tops, toilet, sink, water heater, computer, bed, my fat ass, a couple of dogs, , wife, some fat kids - what's going to lift all that plus a few tons of house?
There's a huge surface area under the house. Figure a house and contents weighs 80,000 lbs, and is 20x40 feet (or 115,000 in^2). So you only need to sustain .7 psi of pressure to float the house. A person can generate that much pressure from their lung - if the house was sitting on a airbag, a person could lift the house just by blowing up the airbag (though it make takes weeks or longer to fill the airbag). But without an airbag, since the air is constantly leaking out from around the house, it takes a huge volume of air to keep the house suspended. A 3cm gap around the perimeter is a huge gap and will require large quantities of air to sustain the pressure.
Housing ain't cheap, but most of the price goes into the land, and houses are viewed as somewhat disposable, most people expect a house to last about the lifetime of a generation. There are some companies that run commercials about a "100 year houses", implying this is a long-life structure, so that should tell you what the general expectations are.
Also, I don't believe the "being crushed" argument will be really critical, except in marketing. Most people seem to die from the fires that inevitably follow the earthquakes, not under the collapsed structures.
> housing ain't cheap in Japan
Housing is very cheap in Japan (cheaply bought and cheaply built).
Land is expensive. Not housing.
The point here is not really to save the house, but saving the people inside.
As an engineer that has to do with compressors fairly often (though mostly on paper), I think your idea is much more sensible than installing a compressor. Compressors are hellishly expensive, require regular and competent maintenance (which is also expensive), and are prone to failure (more so than, say, pumps or valves). And anyway, a compressor that can start up and fill that kind of volume in a second is just a pipe dream; the study in the FA probably had a ludicrously overdimensioned compressor idling, and if you have to ask for how much it costs to idle a compressor 24/7 for decades waiting for an earthquake, you can't afford it—that's before considering its noise and how it would make your house uninhabitable.
My bet, however, would be on something like airbag chemicals. They react fast, the principle is well known and only needs to be scaled up. Compared to a valve, it is easier to build a fail-safe solution, and a large high-pressure air tanks will have all kinds of regulatory issues (for good reasons).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It's the 21st century here in Japan. Any shoji screens still in houses are usually decorative or a just to give a little visual privacy. We use real walls.We use real walls.
Not according to wikipedia, which says timber frames are popular.
Only on /. would someone, in a different country, try to use Wikipedia to disagree with the reality of someone who actually lives in the country in question. Also, "timber frame" does not mean what you apparently think it does. The majority of homes in the US (and many other countries) are also timber frame.