Huntsville-developed NASA hardware revolutionizes earthquake-stabilizing technology - WAAY

While NASA's research efforts focus on developing technology to make space exploration possible, they often end up helping with life back on Earth.  That's exactly what happened in Huntsville after engineers developed a technology to stabilize a rocket that shook a little more than it was supposed to.

"It was tough for us to solve, because everything we had to throw to solve at it, everything is payload to orbit," said Rob Berry, who was the project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center for the LOx dampener technology.  "So we did not have the advantage of throwing a lot of weight at it."

In rocket engineering, weight is the name of the game.  The lighter the rocket, the more cargo you can put in it.  So with the now-cancelled Ares I rocket, which tended to violently vibrate during launch, Marshall's engineers had to create an effective vibration-dampening technology that was also as light as possible.  Existing stabilizing designs used in large structures like boats and buildings come from the early 1900's, and they use heavy metal components like counterweights and springs.

So Berry and his team had the idea to use the heavy mass already in the rocket: the liquid fuels in the fuel tanks.  By putting in a device that acts like a balloon, they could manipulate the mass vibrations, effectively neutralizing them.  It was a completely new approach to stabilizing large structures, and it was more lightweight, cheaper and more effective than existing technology.

Watch Berry explain how the technology works below:

Then, they realized that any large structure that interacts with a liquid could use the technology - and that's anything from boats to cars to buildings with plumbing.  Each NASA center has a technology transfer office, and Marshall's office saw the many applications of the new vibration-dampening hardware. 

"We take those inventions, those new technology reports, and we actually try to assess the commercial value of the technology," said Sammy Nabors, who manages the licensing of Marshall's technology to the commercial industry.

One of the inventors of the project, Jeff Lindner, took his work at NASA to the local Huntsville tech company LINC Research.  NASA and LINC now co-hold the patent of the technology, and LINC is working on bringing the technology to the private sector. 

"We are using that, proposing to use that on a lot of different structures, one would be earthquake-prone buildings," said Curtis Taylor, the president of LINC.  

The first commercial implementation of the technology is at a skyscraper at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.  LINC is currently working with the architecture firm Thornton Tomasetti to install it.  

The NASA-developed vibration dampeners could prove to be a huge improvement over the older tune-mass designs in-use today.  Those designs need an outside force to push on them to work.  For example, in order for a counterweight to balance something, it needs to be pushed, then springs or other hardware try to bleed that energy away.  The new design uses the interaction between liquids in the structure and the structure itself to help stabilize it.  According to Berry, their design is a "passive" design, so an earthquake or wind or any other outside force does not need to push on the structure to stabilize it. 

Even though the Ares I rocket will never launch humans to orbit, and no other rocket in the foreseeable future will need the technology, Berry is excited to see his team's work end up in use back on Earth.

"It's thrilling to realize that we've come across a whole new technology, a whole suite of technologies from the initial launch vehicle issue that's going to have lasting implications for decades or centuries going forward," he said. 

But rockets and buildings aren't the only use.  Boats, cars, airplanes and other large structures could benefit from the technology.  LINC and NASA are currently working to bring the technology to any industry that could benefit from smaller, cheaper and more effective vibration-dampening hardware. 

For more information, watch a NASA video feature on the vibration-dampening technology below:

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