New Materials to Lay the Foundations for Living Structures that Respond to their Environment

Researchers are looking into new materials to lay the foundations for living structures that respond to their environment.

They aim to create self-​sustaining infrastructures that can monitor their condition and even repair themselves.When Eleni Chatzi is not busy reading technical papers about vibrating bridges, smart infrastructures and data-​driven engineering, she enjoys immersing herself in science fiction novels.“I like pondering unconventional ideas and imagining a world that is yet to come,” says Chatzi, Professor of Structural Mechanics at ETH Zurich.

Indeed, there is a ring of sci-​fi to it when she talks about applications that her research could someday lead to. One such futurist vision is bridges that grow out of a handful of seeds and consist entirely of organic material.This 38-​year-old civil engineer, whose professorship has received funding from the Albert Lück-​Stiftung since 2010, specialises in structural health monitoring.

Chatzi diagnoses the health of dams, bridges, wind turbines, aircraft and vehicles using sensors, algorithms that convert and process signals, and machine learning. Currently, engineers have to either externally install the sensors needed to measure tension, deformation, acceleration, wind and strain, or incorporate these devices into the initial structural design.