Reducing Skyscraper Sway With NASA Technology | RTI Innovation Advisors
For over 50 years, we’ve worked with NASA to bring its technologies to U.S. industry to create revenue, jobs, and economic growth. As a strategic advisor we
- assess technology for commercial potential
- prioritize which technologies to promote to industry
- define the technologies’ value proposition
- identify & engage commercialization partners and
- bringing licensing deals to NASA.
NASA wanted to understand the commercial application for its fluid-structure coupling, a technology that prevents dangerous and potentially deadly vibrations during rocket launches. The technology had many potential benefits applications; it was a question of selecting the ideal licensor. We collaborated with NASA to define and implement a technology transfer strategy — from characterizing the marketing opportunity to building a pipeline of potential licensors, making connections, and structuring a licensing agreement.
We identified a perfect match for the NASA-developed technology: Thornton Tomasetti, a global leader in engineering design of skyscrapers that also had extensive experience designing dampers. We reached out to appropriate contacts at Thornton Tomasetti and collaborated with NASA to negotiate a licensing agreement with them. Thornton Tomasetti refined NASA’s technology for building applications, and today they now use the damping method — which they call the fluid harmonic damper — to control sway in bridges and buildings.
Thornton Tomasetti has the exclusive right to apply the fluid harmonic disruptor to tall buildings in the U.S. A lighter, lower-cost alternative to tuned-mass dampers, Thornton Tomasetti used the fluid harmonic disruptor in Brooklyn’s B2; according to the architects, the B2 was the tallest modular residential building in the world when it was completed in 2016.
Originally published at https://rtiinnovationadvisors.org.
