UC Connect: Earthquakes + Innovation = Resilience
University of Canterbury (UC) Engineering technology is being used to quake-proof buildings, build the “Ferrari of bridges”, and predict the future in order to save lives in these shaky isles and around the world.
The upcoming talk, UC Connect: Earthquakes + Innovation = Resilience will feature three revolutionary, award-winning UC academics – Distinguished Professor Geoff Chase, Professor Geoff Rodgers and Professor Alessandro Palermo. Each professor will highlight a different aspect of structural earthquake engineering advances made and lessons learnt, following the Canterbury earthquakes. Their talks will include an overview of some of the new resilient structures built using their novel solutions, such as state-of-the-art seismic dampers, and techniques, like in-silico “virtual buildings”, helping to engineer a more resilient future.
My area: Energy dissipation to enable and support low-damage seismic design
“The ability to create buildings that are more resilient to large earthquakes is the goal of academic researchers as well as practicing engineers. In lieu of damage to structural members and contents, we need to provide alternative forms of energy dissipation to damp building motion and absorb the significant energy imparted into a building during a large earthquake. A suite of different energy dissipation and bracing elements have been developed to enable a broad range of potential applications in different structures. I will speak on the deployment of UC research outcomes in three different buildings – two within the Christchurch CBD rebuild (Forté Health and Tūranga central public library) and one in San Francisco (Casa Adelante affordable housing) in the United States. As well as being a fantastic public asset and a focal point of the rebuilt Christchurch CBD, the Tūranga library building has won numerous industry awards for the resilient seismic design. Likewise, despite being a tightly budgeted community housing project for low-income, senior and formerly homeless residents of San Francisco’s Mission District, Casa Adelante’s careful design and innovative thinking by the design engineers has produced a building awarded a US Resiliency Council Gold Rating for Seismic Performance. My talk will cover all three projects where the UC-developed dampers have been used, covering some of the drivers for uptake and innovative designs to achieve resilience.”
My area: Low-damage design and cost-effective connection detailing for buildings and bridges.