Megawatt electrical motor designed by MIT engineers could help electrify aviation

Technology demonstrations show the machine’s major components achieve the required performance.

Reports and Proceedings

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Aviation’s huge carbon footprint could shrink significantly with electrification. To date, however, only small all-electric planes have gotten off the ground. Their electric motors generate hundreds of kilowatts of power. To electrify larger, heavier jets, such as commercial airliners, megawatt-scale motors are required. These would be propelled by hybrid or turbo-electric propulsion systems where an electrical machine is coupled with a gas turbine aero-engine.

 

To meet this need, a team of MIT engineers is now creating a 1-megawatt motor that could be a key stepping stone toward electrifying larger aircraft. The team has designed and tested the major components of the motor, and shown through detailed computations that the coupled components can work as a whole to generate one megawatt of power, at a weight and size competitive with current small aero-engines.

 

For all-electric applications, the team envisions the motor could be paired with a source of electricity such as a battery or a fuel cell. The motor could then turn the electrical energy into mechanical work to power a plane’s propellers. The electrical machine could also be paired with a traditional turbofan jet engine to run as a hybrid propulsion system, providing electric propulsion during certain phases of a flight. 

 

“No matter what we use as an energy carrier — batteries, hydrogen, ammonia, or sustainable aviation fuel — independent of all that, megawatt-class motors will be a key enabler for greening aviation,” says Zoltan Spakovszky, the T. Wilson Professor in Aeronautics and the Director of the Gas Turbine Laboratory (GTL) at MIT, who leads the project.

 

Spakovszky and members of his team, along with industry collaborators, will present their work at a special session of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics – Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium (EATS) at the Aviation conference in June. 

 

The MIT team is composed of faculty, students, and research staff from GTL and the MIT Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems: Henry Andersen Yuankang Chen, Zachary Cordero, David Cuadrado,  Edward Greitzer, Charlotte Gump, James Kirtley, Jr., Jeffrey Lang, David Otten, David Perreault, and Mohammad Qasim,  along with Marc Amato of Innova-Logic LLC. The project is sponsored by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).

 

Heavy stuff

 

To prevent the worst impacts from human-induced climate change, scientists have determined that global emissions of carbon dioxide must reach net zero by 2050. Meeting this target for aviation, Spakovszky says, will require “step-change achievements” in the design of unconventional aircraft, smart and flexible fuel systems, advanced materials, and safe and efficient electrified propulsion. Multiple aerospace companies are focused on electrified propulsion and the design of megawatt-scale electric machines that are powerful and light enough to propel passenger aircraft.

 

“There is no silver bullet to make this happen, and the devil is in the details,” Spakovszky says. “This is hard engineering, in terms of co-optimizing individual components and making them compatible with each other while maximizing overall performance. To do this means we have to push the boundaries in materials, manufacturing, thermal management, structures and rotordynamics, and power electronics.”

 

Broadly speaking, an electric motor uses electromagnetic force to generate motion. Electric motors, such as those that power the fan in your laptop, use electrical energy — from a battery or power supply — to generate a magnetic field, typically through copper coils. In response, a magnet, set near the coils, then spins in the direction of the generated field and can then drive a fan or propeller.

 

Electric machines have been around for over 150 years, with the understanding that, the bigger the appliance or vehicle, the larger the copper coils  and the magnetic rotor, making the machine heavier. The more power the electrical machine generates, the more heat it produces, which requires additional elements to keep the components cool — all of which can take up space and add significant weight to the system, making it challenging for airplane applications.

 

“Heavy stuff doesn’t go on airplanes,” Spakovszky says. “So we had to come up with a compact, lightweight, and powerful architecture.” 

 

Good trajectory

 

As designed, the MIT electric motor and power electronics are each about the size of a checked suitcase weighing less than an adult passenger. 

 

The motor’s main components are: a high-speed rotor, lined with an array of magnets with varying orientation of polarity; a compact low-loss stator that fits inside the rotor and contains an intricate array of copper windings; an advanced heat exchanger that keeps the components cool while transmitting the torque of the machine; and a distributed power electronics system, made from 30 custom-built circuit boards, that precisely change the currents running through each of the stator’s copper windings, at high frequency. 

 

“I believe this is the first truly co-optimized integrated design,” Spakovszky says. “Which means we did a very extensive design space exploration where all considerations from thermal management, to rotor dynamics, to power electronics and electrical machine architecture were assessed in an integrated way to find out what is the best possible combination to get the required specific power at one megawatt.”

 

As a whole system, the motor is designed such that the distributed circuit boards are close coupled with the electrical machine to minimize transmission loss and to allow effective air cooling through the integrated heat exchanger.

 

“This is a high-speed machine, and to keep it rotating while creating torque, the magnetic fields have to be traveling very quickly, which we can do through our circuit boards switching at high frequency,” Spakovszky says. 

 

To mitigate risk, the team has built and tested each of the major components individually, and shown that they can operate as designed and at conditions exceeding normal operational demands. The researchers plan to assemble the first fully working electric motor, and start testing it in the fall. 

 

Once the MIT team can demonstrate the electric motor as a whole, they say the design could power regional aircraft and could also be a companion to conventional jet engines, to enable hybrid-electric propulsion systems. The team also envision that multiple one-megawatt motors could power multiple fans distributed along the wing on future aircraft configurations. Looking ahead, the foundations of the one-megawatt electrical machine design could potentially be scaled up to multi-megawatt motors, to power larger passenger planes.

 

“I think we’re on a good trajectory,” says Spakovszky, whose group and research have focused on more than just gas turbines. “We are not electrical engineers by training, but addressing the 2050 climate grand challenge is of utmost importance; working with electrical engineering faculty, staff and students for this goal can draw on MIT’s breadth of technologies so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So we are reinventing ourselves in new areas. And MIT gives you the opportunity to do that.”

 

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

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ARTICLE TITLE

“A Megawatt-Class Electrical Machine Technology Demonstrator For Turbo-Electric Propulsion”

Geisel study offers new insights into how Medicare fraud has spread across U.S. regions in recent years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE GEISEL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT DARTMOUTH

Geisel Study Offers New Insights into How Medicare Fraud Has Spread Across U.S. Regions in Recent Years

Findings from an innovative study conducted by a team of researchers at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, are providing new insights into how the rapid spread (or diffusion) of fraudulent Medicare home healthcare billing has occurred across the U.S. in recent years.

To understand the significant growth of Medicare fraud during the 2000s in just a few regions of the country, the research team examined the network structure of home health agencies (HHAs) and identified a set of characteristics shared by regions where fraud was most likely to occur. 

Among their key findings, they determined that these characteristics included: the sharing of patients across multiple (and often many) agencies; high rates of expenditures across hospital referral regions (HRRs) and rapid increases in rates over time, substantial growth in the number of HHAs, and whether a region would attract a Department of Justice (DOJ) anti-fraud office. They also found evidence of a peer effect in agency billings, which suggests a sharing of fraudulent practices locally between agencies. 

There are currently more than 11,000 HHAs in the U.S. providing care to Medicare beneficiaries—HHAs primarily perform skilled nursing and other medical (therapeutic) services in a patient’s home. 

Some common examples of documented fraudulent behavior have included: agency owners billing for unnecessary or nonexistent services; kickbacks to physicians, patient recruiters, and staffing groups to refer patients to their agency; or sharing of patient IDs across networks of HHAs owned by organized criminal organizations. 

“We developed a novel network analysis tool—a bipartite mixture (BMIX) index—which allowed us to measure the links between each patient and each HHA and gain more information about the diffusion process than was possible using conventional network measures,” explains lead author James O’Malley, MS, PhD, who holds the Peggy Y. Thomson Professorship in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences and serves as a professor of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and of Biomedical Data Science at Geisel, and adjunct professor in the Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth.

Using fee-for-service Medicare claims data from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health 

Care, the study team observed a dramatic increase in home healthcare activity over a seven-year period (2002 to 2009)—with a more than doubling of expenditures from $14.9 billion to $33.7 billion. 

The authors found that the increase in expenditures was highly concentrated in just a few HRRs of the U.S. Lending support to their findings, these regions were also typically the ones where the DOJ subsequently established local anti-fraud offices.

For example, the average billing per Medicare enrollee in McAllen, TX and Miami, FL increased by $2,127 and $2,422 respectively compared to just an average increase of $289 in other HRRs that were not targeted by the DOJ offices. After the first of these anti-fraud offices was opened in Southern Florida in 2007, the DOJ expanded to a total of nine offices by 2016. These areas included: Los Angeles, CA; Tampa, FL; Chicago, IL; Brooklyn, NY; Detroit, MI; Southern Louisiana; and Dallas, TX.

To help explain why the expansion of fraudulent behavior occurred so rapidly in some healthcare markets but not others, the study team also developed a theoretical economic model. “It more or less makes the argument that if the benefits exceed the risks in the eyes of the perpetrators, then it’s more likely that you’ll see this type of fraudulent behavior—where people are willing to risk conviction, fines, and imprisonment to make larger profits,” O’Malley explains.

One key outcome of the study is that the BMIX index has shown promise in predicting future excessive billing behavior for HHAs, says O’Malley, suggesting its value for machine-learning approaches to unearthing Medicare fraud in HHAs, as well as in other areas of healthcare. 

“We would love for these methods and maybe generalized versions and 

alternative versions to be used by those persons or organizations who are policing the healthcare system,” he says. “Hopefully, that would allow them to be able to prosecute more violators of the law, perhaps earlier on before it gets too far out of hand. And that in turn, would then save the healthcare system and U.S. taxpayers a lot of money.”

O’Malley adds: “This was very much an interdisciplinary paper and I’d like to recognize my two coauthors for their important contributions. Jon Skinner is a wonderful health economist who has been very supportive of what I’ve done in my time here at Dartmouth. And Tom Buboltz is a recently retired, 37-year veteran of The Dartmouth Institute, who has skillfully worked with Medicare claims data throughout his career at Dartmouth.”

See more examples of innovative network and statistical methods research in the attached addendum.

The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice is a world leader in studying and advancing models for disruptive change in healthcare delivery. The work of Dartmouth Institute faculty and researchers includes developing the concept of shared decision-making between patients and healthcare professionals, creating the model for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and introducing the game-changing concept that more healthcare is not necessarily better care

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JOURNAL

Social Science & Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115927 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The diffusion of health care fraud: A bipartite network analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jun-2023

Ling Li leads team to see through eyes made of stone

If seeing through two eyes gives humans a picture of their world, what kind of worldview do chitons have with thousands of tiny aragonite eyes? This is the question posed by an international team led by Virginia Tech's Li.

Grant and Award Announcement

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: LING LI HOLDS A CHITON, A SMALL MOLLUSK THAT WILL BE STUDIED BY HIS TEAM. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY ALEX PARRISH FOR VIRGINIA TECH.

Ling Li, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded $1.05 million over three years to lead a team studying the visual abilities of a unique underwater creature with thousands of eyes.

The project reunites Li with a former collaborator, University of South Carolina Associate Professor Daniel Speiser. They also enlisted the expertise of an internationally recognized applied mathematician who specializes in image processing, Daniel Baum of the Zuse Institute in Berlin.

What stony eyes see and what it means

The team’s research will focus on the stony eyes of chitons. These marine creatures have pill-shaped, hard outer shells with overlapping plates and soft inner bodies. Their shells are made of a calcium carbonate material called aragonite, one of the primary ingredients from which pearls are formed. To see its surroundings, a chiton uses thousands of tiny, stony eyes embedded in its shell’s armored plates, all formed from the same rugged material.

Speiser made early discoveries of the makeup of a chiton’s optic system, formulating ideas about the creature’s ability to see images. During Li’s Ph.D. studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and subsequent postdoctoral work at Harvard, Li joined Speiser and collaborators to build off Speiser’s initial work and explore how the eyes work. Together, they devised an experimental setup allowing them to look directly through the chiton’s aragonite lens, seeing blurred but recognizable shapes.

Aragonite eyes are rigid and therefore cannot adjust their focus or viewing directions in the way the soft eyes of many creatures can. While Speiser and Li’s early work demonstrated the working principles and corresponding structural basis for single stony eyes, the animal’s ability to process visual information goes beyond individual eyes. These rigid optical elements are interconnected through a complex microscopic channel network that houses photosensitive cells and neural tissues, forming an integrated neural network. The animal gets visual feedback, but each eye isn’t processing much data. Because a single eye is roughly the width of a human hair, single-eye chiton vision is far from high-definition.

Still, a chiton’s shell has hundreds to thousands of those eyes. Do all the tiny images come back together in the chiton’s nervous system? Is it able to take those fragments and form a full picture? Does the visual information acquired from individual eyes reconstitute as a more high-definition image?

Answering new questions with a new team

Li and Speiser sought out funding opportunities to explore these new questions through their research. They secured a grant from the Human Frontier Science program, a booster of frontier, basic research focused on living organisms. The program provides research funding to support innovative research into fundamental biological problems, particularly projects with novel and interdisciplinary approaches that create international partnerships.

Li and Speiser’s project to uncover the working principles of the unique distributed sensing system of chitons was certainly novel.

Li’s team at Virginia Tech has established a storied history in exploring unique material design strategies from nature, having studied sea urchin-inspired ceramics and starfish microlattices. Speiser built a robust portfolio of projects at South Carolina in animal biology and physiology. The additional years of experience built in their respective labs gave them a deeper well of knowledge from which to draw and revisit their chiton questions.

Li and Speiser met Baum through a colleague and found that the German researcher’s background in image analysis and visualization of biological structures was the critical final piece to the puzzle of interpreting and reporting neural network data.

With backing from the Human Frontier Science program, the team wants to know how a simple marine mollusk processes visual feedback from thousands of eyes and how it pieces together those thousands of points of connected data to make decisions about movement and perceiving danger. A few different species of chiton will be studied so that the researchers can compare results.

Li will use his expertise in biological materials and 3D material characterization to obtain high-resolution 3D data of the chitons’ sensory networks. Baum’s team in Germany will then analyze Li’s dataset to establish digital models and formulate hypotheses about network function. Speiser’s team will pick up from there, testing his colleagues’ theories through animal behavioral experiments. Li will weigh back into that process, providing insight on how the hard and soft materials work together. The team will also investigate how factors such as shell and eye regrowth after damage impact the resilience of this distributed sensing network.

Both Speiser and Baum are eager to begin the project because of its vast potential.

"Learning more about the neural processing underlying vision in chitons is very exciting, as are the opportunities to explore how chitons avoid compromising their armor system by incorporating eyes into it and how they mitigate the metabolic costs incurred by a highly distributed network of hundreds to thousands of sensors," said Speiser.

“This a wonderful project with two experts in biological materials and visual biological systems,” said Baum. “I’m very much looking forward to starting it, adding my own expertise in image analysis and visualization to help shed light on the fascinating visual system of chitons.”

Local newspaper coverage improves information about public companies

Conversely, when local newspaper coverage declined, stock volatility, information asymmetry and illiquidity increased, study found.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

 

IMAGE: CALEB RAWSON, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

Accounting researchers at the University of Arkansas are deepening their understanding of the effect of shrinking newsrooms on the financial information of public companies.

A new study, to be published in Review of Accounting Studies, shows that local newspaper coverage significantly improved the general information about public companies, as measured by lower stock volatility and more accurate forecasts by financial analysts. Conversely, when local newspaper coverage declined, stock volatility, information asymmetry and illiquidity increased, the researchers found.

A sign of stock stability, information asymmetry refers to the difference or gap between two parties in their knowledge of relevant factors and details about companies’ value. Illiquidity simply means a security or asset that cannot be exchanged for cash or sold easily.   

“Employment at newspapers has declined more than 75% since 2000,” said Caleb Rawson, assistant professor of accounting in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. “Researchers in other fields have already shown how this has a negative impact on local government, in terms of transparency and accountability of elected officials. We’re finding the same is true for businesses and public companies. These changes – that is, the decrease in local newsroom employment – have had a detrimental effect on the information environment of local firms.”

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rawson and co-authors Kris Allee, professor of accounting at the U of A,, and Ryan Cating, assistant professor of accounting at the University of Central Arkansas and a U of A doctoral alumnus in accounting, measured the level of local news intensity in each city (technically, each metropolitan statistical area, or MSA) as the percent of local jobs in the newspaper publishing industry. They compared this data to key indicators of firms’ financial information.

The researchers found that the above effect – reduced news intensity leading to less or poorer quality of information – was exacerbated when a given firm was more important to the local economy. For these firms, less local newspaper intensity was associated with significantly lower analyst accuracy and fewer, or more dispersed, forecasts.

Rawson and his colleagues also investigated how stakeholders respond to declines in local news coverage of firms. Firm managers increased the number of forward-looking financial disclosures and analysts increased their own coverage. Following decreases in newspaper employment, investors increased their own data-gathering activities as well.

“We think these results provide insights into the methods by which stakeholders attempt to improve firms’ information environments when local news coverage fades and highlight the important role that local newspapers play in the economy,” Rawson said.

Allee is the Doyle Z. Williams Chair of the Walton College’s Department of Accounting.

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JOURNAL

Review of Accounting Studies

Similar symptoms, biological abnormalities underlie long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome are debilitating conditions with similar symptoms. Neither condition has diagnostic tests or treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and each cost the United States billions of dollars each year in direct medical expenses and lost productivity. Doctors and researchers have wondered what are the underlying biological abnormalities that may cause symptoms, and whether these abnormalities are similar in the two illnesses.

A review article authored by senior investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and the Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, addresses these questions. In it, the authors review 559 scientific publications. The authors compared the symptoms of both conditions, noting their great similarity, and then showed that very similar underlying biological abnormalities have been found in both conditions, abnormalities involving the brain, immune system, heart, lungs, gut, and energy metabolism.

“By making a side-by-side comparison of what is known about each type of abnormality, in each of these two illnesses, our review serves as a ‘road map’ to identify areas that require further research,” said Anthony L. Komaroff, MD, senior physician in the Brigham Department of Medicine and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.  “We hope that identifying those abnormalities for which the evidence is strongest will help focus the search for improved diagnostic tests and effective treatments.”

Read more in Frontiers in Medicine.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Medicine

DOI

10.3389/fmed.2023.1187163 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

ME/CFS and Long COVID share similar symptoms and biological abnormalities: road map to the literature

Jiu Jitsu club stage physical assaults to help advance forensic research

Researchers from Northumbria University and King’s College London have published findings outlining the extent that textile fibres transfer during controlled assault scenarios.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: MEMBERS OF NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY JIU JITSU CLUB STAGED PHYSICAL ASSAULTS TO HELP ADVANCE FORENSIC RESEARCH. view more 

CREDIT: NONE

Researchers from Northumbria University and King’s College London have published findings outlining the extent that textile fibres transfer during controlled assault scenarios.

Their work, recently published in the academic journal Science & Justice, is the first time the number of fibres transferred between garments during physical assaults has been assessed by simulating the act with real people through Northumbria University’s Jiu Jitsu club.

Dr Kelly Sheridan, Assistant Professor of Forensic Science in Northumbria’s Department of Applied Sciences, believes the findings will help fill a knowledge gap in the forensic field and inform the evaluation of fibre evidence in criminal cases involving assaults.

“The importance of this research is that many experimental studies in forensic science are often a far cry from real-life situations, and we wanted to address that in this study,” Dr Sheridan said. “We wanted to investigate the extent of fibre transfer during different types of physical assaults using real people for the first time and Dr David Chalton, who leads the Jiu Jitsu club, made it possible.”

Knowledge of the number of fibres transferred during a physical activity is essential for the interpretation of forensic evidence in many criminal cases and existing studies have already provided important data on how variables such as increased time and pressure during physical contact can impact on the number of fibres which transfer. However, the extent and variability of fibre transfer in uncontrolled scenarios including real-life situations, is largely unknown.

Members of Northumbria’s Jiu Jitsu club were asked to either play the role of an aggressor or a victim in four simulated scenarios which included high and low intensity activities over different time periods.

Results showed that approximately 1,000 to 44,000 fibres were cross-transferred between the participants’ garments, with noticeable differences between the different scenarios.

Dr Sheridan added: “Primarily, what this has demonstrated is that the sheer quantity of fibres found to transfer are far greater than anything previously published. We hope that using these realistic scenarios will help to inform expectations during the evaluation of fibre evidence.”

Dr David Chalton is Northumbria’s Lead Coach for Jiu Jitsu and has taught the close combat martial art at the University for almost 20 years.

“Our style of Jiu Jitsu covers striking, throwing and to a lesser extent ground-fighting. We focus on a self-defence approach, so the situations Dr Sheridan wanted to simulate were quite straight forward and familiar for us,” Dr Chalton explained.

“The club members were really keen to contribute and apply their training for a purpose beyond their own personal and club development, so we had no shortage of volunteers to put on the dyed training uniforms which were used to help track the fibre transfer.”

Dr Ray Palmer is an independent forensic science consultant who is also an Associate Lecturer at Northumbria. He worked with Dr Sheridan to develop the research concept and the methodology was progressed by the research team, which included final year Forensic Science students.

“I’m pleased with the results of this study as it provides information of great value to practicing forensic scientists who provide expert testimony in a court of law,” Dr Palmer said. “The methodology we employed in this study provides a more robust assessment of the effects caused by actual physical assault scenarios, than any existing similar study available to forensic practitioners.”

Assistant Professor in Forensic Chemistry at King’s College London, Dr Matteo Gallidabino, joined the team to help interpret the findings of the study. He explained: “My field of expertise is chemical evidence with an emphasis on gun shot residues and explosives. For both, characterising the transfer mechanisms of the materials involved is important for the assessment of the forensic findings and the outcome of a criminal case often comes down to understanding the differences between different scenarios.

“Our research aims to offer the appropriate frameworks for that interpretation to take place and, after speaking with Dr Sheridan, we both felt there was something more we could offer to inform this area of research by using a simulation-based approach.”

More information is available in the full research paper, A quantitative assessment of the extent and distribution of textile fibre transfer to persons involved in physical assault, published in the official journal of The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences, Science & Justice.

Northumbria’s Department of Applied Sciences includes biology, biomedical sciences, chemistry, forensic science, food and nutritional sciences. Discover more about research and study options by visiting www.northumbria.ac.uk/appliedsciences

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DOI

10.1016/j.scijus.2023.05.001 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A quantitative assessment of the extent and distribution of textile fibre transfer to persons involved in physical assault

Campi Flegrei volcano edges closer to possible eruption

by University College London

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy has become weaker and more prone to rupturing, making an eruption more likely, according to a new study by researchers at UCL (University College London) and Italy's National Research Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).

The volcano, which last erupted in 1538, has been restless for more than 70 years, with two-year spikes of unrest in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, and a slower phase of unrest over the last decade. Tens of thousands of small earthquakes have occurred during these periods and the coastal town of Pozzuoli has been lifted by nearly 4 m (13 ft), roughly the height of a double-decker bus.

The new study, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, used a model of volcano fracturing, developed at UCL, to interpret the patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift, and concluded that parts of the volcano had been stretched nearly to breaking point.

Lead author Professor Christopher Kilburn (UCL Earth Sciences) said, "Our new study confirms that Campi Flegrei is moving closer to rupture. However, this does not mean an eruption is guaranteed. The rupture may open a crack through the crust, but the magma still needs to be pushing up at the right location for an eruption to occur."

"This is the first time we have applied our model, which is based on the physics of how rocks break, in real-time to any volcano."

"Our first use of the model was in 2017 and since then Campi Flegrei has behaved as we predicted, with an increasing number of small earthquakes indicating pressure from below."

"We will now have to adjust our procedures for estimating the chances of new routes being opened for magma or gas to reach the surface."

"The study is the first of its kind to forecast rupture at an active volcano. It marks a step change in our goal to improve forecasts of eruptions worldwide."

Dr. Nicola Alessandro Pino from the Vesuvius Observatory, which represents the INGV in Naples, said, "Our results show that parts of the volcano are becoming weaker. This means that it might break even though the stresses pulling it apart are smaller than they were during the last crisis 40 years ago."

Campi Flegrei is the closest active volcano to London. It is not an obvious volcano because, instead of growing into a traditional mountain, it has the shape of a gentle depression 12-14 km (7.5-8.5 miles) across (and thus is known as a caldera). This explains why 360,000 people now live on its roof.

For the past decade, the ground below Pozzuoli has been creeping upwards at about 10 cm (4 in) a year. Persistent small earthquakes have also been registered for the first time since the mid-1980s. More than 600 were recorded in April, the largest monthly number so far.

The disturbance has been caused by the movement of fluids about 3 km (2 miles) beneath the surface. Some of the fluids may be molten rock, or magma, and some may be natural volcanic gas. The latest phase of unrest appears likely to be caused by magmatic gas that is seeping into gaps in the rock, filling the 3 km-thick crust like a sponge.

The earthquakes occur when faults (cracks) slip due to the stretching of the crust. The pattern of earthquakes from 2020 suggests the rock is responding in an inelastic way, by breaking rather than bending.

Dr. Stefania Danesi from INGV Bologna said, "We cannot see what is happening underground. Instead we have to decipher the clues the volcano gives us, such as earthquakes and uplift of the ground."

In their paper, the team explained that the effect of the unrest since the 1950s is cumulative, meaning an eventual eruption could be preceded by relatively weak signals such as a smaller rate of ground uplift and fewer earthquakes. This was the case for the eruption of the Rabaul caldera in Papua New Guinea in 1994, which was preceded by small earthquakes occurring at a tenth of the rate than had occurred during a crisis a decade earlier.

Campi Flegrei's current tensile strength (the maximum stress a material can bear before breaking when it is stretched) is likely to be about a third of what it was in 1984, the researchers said.

The team emphasized that an eruption was not inevitable. Dr. Stefano Carlino from the Vesuvius Observatory explained, "It's the same for all volcanoes that have been quiet for generations. Campi Flegrei may settle into a new routine of gently rising and subsiding, as seen at similar volcanoes around the world, or simply return to rest. We can't yet say for sure what will happen. The important point is to be prepared for all outcomes."

Professor Kilburn and colleagues will now apply the UCL model of volcano fracturing to other volcanoes that have reawakened after a long period of time, seeking to establish more reliable criteria for deciding if an eruption is likely. Currently, eruptions are forecast using statistical data unique to each volcano, rather than drawing on fundamental principles that can be applied to multiple volcanoes.

More information: Potential for rupture before eruption at Campi Flegrei caldera, Southern Italy, Communications Earth & Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-023-00842-1

Journal information: Communications Earth & Environment 

Provided by University College London 

Campi Flegrei volcano eruption possibly closer than thought

Global Volcanism Program | Campi Flegrei (si.edu)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE   9-Jun-2023

Italy’s Campi Flegrei Supervolcano Edges Closer to Possible Eruption – Last Erupted in 1538

By UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL) JUNE 9, 2023

A new study suggests that the Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy has become weaker and more likely to erupt. The volcano, which last erupted in 1538, has been restless for over 70 years, with significant unrest and thousands of minor earthquakes over the decades. The recent research applied a unique model of volcano fracturing, interpreting patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift and concluding that parts of the volcano have been stretched nearly to breaking point. (Artist’s illustration of an eruption.)

According to new research, the Campi Flegrei supervolcano in southern Italy has become weaker, making it more likely to erupt. Using a unique model to interpret patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift, the study found parts of the volcano have been stretched nearly to the breaking point. However, an eruption is not guaranteed, and more research is necessary for accurate predictions.

The Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy has become weaker and more prone to rupturing, making an eruption more likely, according to a new study by researchers at UCL (University College London) and Italy’s National Research Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).

The volcano, which last erupted in 1538, has been restless for more than 70 years, with two-year spikes of unrest in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, and a slower phase of unrest over the last decade. Tens of thousands of small earthquakes have occurred during these periods and the coastal town of Pozzuoli has been lifted by nearly 4 m (13 ft), roughly the height of a double-decker bus.

The new study, published today (June 9) in Nature’s Communications Earth & Environment journal, used a model of volcano fracturing, developed at UCL, to interpret the patterns of earthquakes and ground uplift, and concluded that parts of the volcano had been stretched nearly to breaking point.

Campi Flegrei, also known as the Phlegraean Fields, is a large volcanic area situated to the west of Naples, Italy. It’s considered a supervolcano due to the nature and history of its eruptions and its large caldera system. This caldera was formed 39,000 years ago in an eruption that was one of the largest in the history of Europe. Its eruption ejected so much material that it led to a volcanic winter, drastically affecting life across the planet.

Lead author Professor Christopher Kilburn (UCL Earth Sciences) said: “Our new study confirms that Campi Flegrei is moving closer to rupture. However, this does not mean an eruption is guaranteed. The rupture may open a crack through the crust, but the magma still needs to be pushing up at the right location for an eruption to occur.

“This is the first time we have applied our model, which is based on the physics of how rocks break, in real-time to any volcano.

“Our first use of the model was in 2017 and since then Campi Flegrei has behaved as we predicted, with an increasing number of small earthquakes indicating pressure from below.

“We will now have to adjust our procedures for estimating the chances of new routes being opened for magma or gas to reach the surface.

“The study is the first of its kind to forecast rupture at an active volcano. It marks a step change in our goal to improve forecasts of eruptions worldwide.”

Dr. Nicola Alessandro Pino from the Vesuvius Observatory, which represents the INGV in Naples, said: “Our results show that parts of the volcano are becoming weaker. This means that it might break even though the stresses pulling it apart are smaller than they were during the last crisis 40 years ago.”

A supervolcano refers to a volcano that has had an eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), meaning that it’s capable of erupting more than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of material. Supervolcanoes can produce devastation on a nearly unimaginable scale, and such eruptions could result in severe changes in the global climate.

Campi Flegrei is the closest active volcano to London. It is not an obvious volcano because, instead of growing into a traditional mountain, it has the shape of a gentle depression 12-14 km (7.5-8.5 miles) across (and thus is known as a caldera). This explains why 360,000 people now live on its roof.

For the past decade, the ground below Pozzuoli has been creeping upwards at about 10 cm (4 in) a year. Persistent small earthquakes have also been registered for the first time since the mid-1980s. More than 600 were recorded in April, the largest monthly number so far.

The disturbance has been caused by the movement of fluids about 3 km (2 miles) beneath the surface. Some of the fluids may be molten rock, or magma, and some may be natural volcanic gas. The latest phase of unrest appears likely to be caused by magmatic gas that is seeping into gaps in the rock, filling the 3 km-thick crust like a sponge.

The earthquakes occur when faults (cracks) slip due to the stretching of the crust. The pattern of earthquakes from 2020 suggests the rock is responding in an inelastic way, by breaking rather than bending.

Dr. Stefania Danesi from INGV Bologna said: “We cannot see what is happening underground. Instead, we have to decipher the clues the volcano gives us, such as earthquakes and uplift of the ground.”

In their paper, the team explained that the effect of the unrest since the 1950s is cumulative, meaning an eventual eruption could be preceded by relatively weak signals such as a smaller rate of ground uplift and fewer earthquakes. This was the case for the eruption of the Rabaul caldera in Papua New Guinea in 1994, which was preceded by small earthquakes occurring at a tenth of the rate than had occurred during a crisis a decade earlier.

Campi Flegrei’s current tensile strength (the maximum stress a material can bear before breaking when it is stretched) is likely to be about a third of what it was in 1984, the researchers said.

The team emphasized that an eruption was not inevitable. Dr. Stefano Carlino from the Vesuvius Observatory explained: “It’s the same for all volcanoes that have been quiet for generations. Campi Flegrei may settle into a new routine of gently rising and subsiding, as seen at similar volcanoes around the world, or simply return to rest. We can’t yet say for sure what will happen. The important point is to be prepared for all outcomes.”

Professor Kilburn and colleagues will now apply the UCL model of volcano fracturing to other volcanoes that have reawakened after a long period of time, seeking to establish more reliable criteria for deciding if an eruption is likely. Currently, eruptions are forecast using statistical data unique to each volcano, rather than drawing on fundamental principles that can be applied to multiple volcanoes.

Reference: “Potential for rupture before eruption at Campi Flegrei caldera, Southern Italy” by 9 June 2023, Communications Earth & Environment.
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-023-00842-1