Patent Issued for Self Adjusting Floating Environment (SAFE) System For Earthquake And Flood Protection (USPTO 10,711,478)

2020 JUL 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Engineering Business Daily -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventor Henderson, D. Gregory (Saratoga, CA), filed on April 18, 2019, was published online on July 27, 2020.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,711,478 is Arx Pax Labs Inc. (Saratoga, California, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “It is estimated that over the last hundred years damage from earthquakes has averaged from 2-4 billion a year in the United States. Damage from floods annually yearly costs a similar amount in the United States. Earthquake events tend to happen less frequently than flood events. However, the damage costs for any significant event tend to be quite large. World-wide, the costs in lives and physical damage are much greater.

“In the U.S., Earthquake risk is primarily focused on the West Coast. However, the new Madrid fault system where Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas come together along the upper Mississippi river also has the potential for generating a large earthquake. Flood damage can occur nearly anywhere in the U.S.

“Away from coastal regions, flooding primarily is caused from overflowing of rivers and their associated tributaries. On the coasts, which have the highest population density (half of the US population lives within 50 miles of the coast), flooding is caused from overflowing rivers, storm surges and tidal surges. It is expected global warming and an associated rises in sea level and weather variability will only exacerbate coastal flooding and inland flooding issues. In addition, the West coast, Hawaii and Alaska face a significant flooding threat from Tsunamis and associated earthquakes. It is estimated the repair of the damage from recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 will cost on the order of $300 billion dollars.

“Cost effective methods for mitigating flood and earthquake damage are limited. For floods, one method is to determine flood prone regions and avoid building in these areas. Flood maps often affect the availability and pricing of land and insurance in the areas covered by the maps. Another method for flood mitigation is to raise the building. Essentially, a multi-story building is constructed where the lower level remains unused, which is inefficient. This method is sometimes applied to smaller buildings, such as houses, but is not generally applied to medium or larger sized buildings. Further, the construction is usually not sufficient to withstand powerful flood conditions.

“Levees are used to control floods. However, levees are expensive to build and maintain, have a high-environmental impact, utilize a lot of land and, in areas with earthquake risks, are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake. Further, as past experience has shown, levees are vulnerable to point failures where a breach at just one location can mitigate most of the benefits of building the levee in the first place.

“For seismic activity, earthquake maps guide building practices and in some instances may identify areas subject to soil liquefaction which are unsuitable for building. To mitigate seismic damage, larger buildings, such as skyscrapers, sometimes use base isolation and/or vibration dampening systems to mitigate earthquake damage. Medium and smaller size building use building techniques and/or are retrofitted with strengthening mechanisms which prevent catastrophic failure and subsequent loss of life but still subject the building to significant damage in an earthquake. Base isolation is generally not considered cost effective for medium and smaller size building and is rarely applied.

“In view of the above, improved and cost-effective methods and apparatus for constructing buildings which mitigate seismic and flood damage are needed.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “A three part foundation system for supporting a building is described. Three part foundation systems can include a containment vessel, a buffer medium and a construction platform. The construction platform rests on the buffer medium which rests on the containment vessel. A building can be built on the construction platform. The buffer medium can be a fluid, a gas or a liquefiable solid. In the case of a fluid buffer medium, such as water, the construction platform can be designed with a sufficiently low density such that the construction platform and building float on top of the buffer medium where the containment vessel constrains the buffer medium to at least an area between the containment vessel and the construction platform.

“In an earthquake, the containment vessel can experience seismic forces, such as large lateral forces, which are minimally transferred through the buffer medium to the construction platform and any buildings residing on the construction platform because of the buffer medium’s limited transmission of seismic forces. Thus, a relatively simple and cost effective base isolation system is achieved. In a flood, as a long as the construction platform and the associated buildings are sufficiently buoyant in water, the construction platform and building can rise with the rising water level. Thus, the design of the TPFS can mitigate both earthquake and flood damage in regions subjects to both floods and earthquakes or just flood damage in regions only subject to floods.

“A method of construction a three part foundation system for a building is described. The method can be generally characterized as a) forming a containment vessel for holding a buffer medium on a ground; b) filling the containment vessel with the buffer medium; c) testing whether the containment vessel holds the buffer medium; d) draining the buffer medium from the containment vessel; e) forming a construction platform above the containment vessel wherein the construction platform including the building is configured to float on the buffer medium when the buffer medium is added to the containment vessel; f) adding the buffer medium to the containment vessel to allow the construction platform and the building to float on the buffer medium; and g) positioning the construction platform relative to sides of the containment vessel such that during an earthquake the containment vessel can move from side to side while the construction platform floats above it allowing seismic forces transferred from the ground to the construction platform to be minimized. In one embodiment, the construction platform can be assembled from pre-fabricated units and it may not be necessary to perform the draining step d in the above method.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A foundation system for a structure, comprising: a containment vessel configured to hold a buffer medium, the containment vessel placed on a ground; and a construction platform formed above the containment vessel wherein the construction platform including a structure is configured to float on the buffer medium; a vertical motion isolation system including a cavity filled with gas; and wherein the construction platform is positioned relative to sides of the containment vessel such that during an earthquake the containment vessel can move from side to side while the construction platform floats above it allowing seismic forces transferred from the ground to the construction platform to be minimized and wherein vertically displaced buffer medium that is pushed upwards due to vertical displacement of the containment vessel during the earthquake enters the cavity and compresses the gas such that vertical force transferred from the vertically displaced buffer medium to the construction platform is reduced.

“2. The foundation system of claim 1, wherein the cavity further includes a flexible membrane which is configured to flex inwards and compress the gas in the cavity when the vertically displaced buffer medium presses against the flexible membrane.

“3. The foundation system of claim 1, wherein the cavity includes an aperture through which the vertically displaced buffer medium flows during the earthquake.

“4. The foundation system of claim 3, wherein the aperture is sized to control a flow rate of the buffer medium in and out of the cavity so that vertical motion of the construction platform is reduced.

“5. The foundation system of claim 3, further comprising a valve placed in the aperture.

“6. The foundation system of claim 5, wherein a flow rate through the valve is controllable to provide a variable flow rate into and out of the cavity.

“7. The foundation system of claim 6, further comprising an actuator coupled to the valve used to control the flow rate through the valve.

“8. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising a pump for pumping gas into or out of the cavity.

“9. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising a pump for pumping buffer medium into and out of the cavity.

“10. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising one or more sensors for measuring vertical motion of the containment vessel, vertical motion of the construction platform or combinations thereof.

“11. The foundation system of claim 10, further comprising a control system configured to receive sensor data from the one or more sensors and in response control one or more of gas entering the cavity, gas exiting the cavity, buffer medium entering the cavity or buffer medium exiting the cavity.

“12. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising a valve coupled to the cavity configured to release gas from cavity.

“13. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising a second cavity filled with the gas wherein vertically displaced buffer medium that is pushed upwards due to vertical displacement of the containment vessel during the earthquake enters the second cavity and compresses the gas such that vertical force transferred from the vertically displaced buffer medium to the construction platform is reduced.

“14. The foundation system of claim 13, further comprising a fluid pathway between the cavity and the second cavity.

“15. The foundation system of claim 14, wherein the fluid pathway allows gas, buffer medium or combinations thereof to travel between the cavity and the second cavity.

“16. The foundation system of claim 1, wherein the cavity includes a plurality of apertures through which the vertically displaced buffer medium flows during the earthquake.

“17. The foundation system of claim 1, further comprising a channel in the containment vessel which is configured to receive a device or a person.

“18. The foundation system of claim 1, wherein the vertical motion isolation system further includes a flexible bladder disposed between a bottom of the construction platform and the containment vessel configured to absorb forces associated with a sidewise movement of the buffer medium during the earthquake.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Henderson, D. Gregory. Self Adjusting Floating Environment (SAFE) System For Earthquake And Flood Protection. U.S. Patent Number 10,711,478, filed April 18, 2019, and published online on July 27, 2020. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,711,478.PN.&OS=PN/10,711,478RS=PN/10,711,478

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