WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A partnership of leading earthquake engineering researchers from top U.S. and Canadian universities and design professionals from the steel industry have begun the final phase of a three-year project to increase the seismic safety of buildings that use lightweight cold-formed steel for their primary beams and columns.
Funded by a grant from the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Network (NEES), the researchers have already developed a series of computational models to determine how a complete building structure will perform during an earthquake.
Headquartered at Purdue's Discovery Park, NEES is a collaborative, 14-site research initiative that aims to improve structural seismic design and reduce the damaging effects of earthquakes and tsunamis. NEES is funded by a $105 million National Science Foundation grant. NEEScomm is the operations unit at Purdue.
The initial stage in the testing involved the construction of a two-story structure and then testing on a "shake table" at the University of Buffalo. The building will undergo the rigors of a controlled earthquake to determine how it performs. There will be two phases to the shake table testing: Phase One is taking place June 12-14 and will test only the structural components, which include the cold-formed steel skeleton and the OSB (oriented strand board) sheathing for the floor diaphragm and roof; Phase Two will add non-structural components like stairs, gypsum sheathing and interior partitions. The objective is to advance cold-formed steel light-frame design in buildings to the next level and equip engineers to implement these performance-based seismic designs in their projects.
The data from the research is published on NEEShub, the cyberinfrastructure component of the NEES network. The NEEShub platform is powered by Purdue's HUBzero software.
The research team is led by Benjamin Schafer of the Department of Civil Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a longtime member of two standards-developing committees of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) - the Committee on Specifications and the Committee on Framing Standards. Schafer's team includes additional researchers from Johns Hopkins and Bucknell University, with input from colleagues at the University of North Texas, Virginia Tech and McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Several steel industry partners are participating in the project, providing technical expertise, donated materials and additional funding. The steel industry partners include the American Iron and Steel Institute, Bentley Systems Inc., ClarkDietrich Building Systems, Devco Engineering Inc., DSi Engineering, Mader Construction Co. Inc., Simpson Strong-Tie Co. Inc., the Steel Framing Industry Association, and the Steel Stud Manufacturers Association.
"We appreciate the valuable technical and economic input that our industry partners have provided," said Schafer, the project's principal investigator.
"This project has already resulted in several innovations that will immediately impact seismic cold-formed steel design standards, making buildings safer," Schafer said. "Now comes the fun part - getting to see how all the research plays out on the shake table. One of the important deliverables from this project will be the transfer of our research results into an open-source software framework. The data will then be made available to engineers, allowing them to see how their structural system designs will respond to an earthquake before they are constructed. This software will create cost efficiencies and potentially save lives."
In fact, project data is already on NEEShub. Preliminary testing conducted on building components (shear walls in particular) have been posted for engineers to examine. Initial uploading of the test data happens immediately after the tests. Fully curated data will happen over the course of this summer.
Schafer said Johns Hopkins graduate student Kara Peterman is on site at the University of Buffalo Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) and is providing updates on the structure's construction and blog entries at the CFS NEES blog.
Project Background
The award is an outcome of the National Science Foundation 09-524 program solicitation for the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Research competition. The title of the project is "NEES-CR: Enabling Performance-Based Seismic Design of Multi-Story Cold-Formed Steel Structures," award number 1041578.
The analysis and initial testing for the project began in late 2010 and took place at John Hopkins University and the University of North Texas. The focus has now moved to the University of Buffalo, where construction of the two-story test building was recently completed. Full-scale shake-table testing is expected to take place in the summer.
About the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Network (NEES) at Purdue
Since Oct. 1, 2009, the NEES operations and cyberinfrastructure headquarters has been at Purdue University's Discovery Park, the result of National Science Foundation cooperative agreement #CMMI-0927178. The 14 participating universities hosting NEES laboratories include Cornell University; Lehigh University; Oregon State University; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; University at Buffalo, SUNY; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California San Diego; University of California Santa Barbara; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; University of Minnesota; University of Nevada, Reno; and University of Texas, Austin. In addition, 5 institutions involved as administrative partners include: San Jose State University, University of Washington, University of Kansas, University of South Carolina, and the Fermi National Laboratory.
Related Stories
| Jun 26, 2014
Plans for Britain’s newest landmark brings in international cooperation
Designers of the London Eye will team up with companies from France, the Netherlands and the United States to construct i360 Brighton, the U.K.'s newest observation tower.
| Jun 25, 2014
The best tall buildings of 2014
Four high-rise buildings from multiple continents have been selected as the best of their region. The best worldwide tall building will be announced November 6.
| Jun 25, 2014
AIA Foundation launches Regional Resilient Design Studio
The Studio is the first to be launched as part of the AIA Foundation’s National Resilience Program, which plans to open a total of five Regional Resilience Design Studios nationwide in collaboration with Architecture for Humanity, and Public Architecture.
| Jun 25, 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring House, Cincinnati’s Union Terminal among 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2014
The National Trust for Historic Preservation released its annual list of 11 Most Endangered Historical Sites in the United States for 2014.
| Jun 25, 2014
Best of Britain: 56 buildings make it to the RIBA Stirling Prize's longlist
The longlist for the 2014 prize includes Foster + Partners' Marseille and London's now-famous Shard, designed by Renzo Piano.
| Jun 25, 2014
Green Building Initiative Announces New Appointments to Board
Glumac consulting engineer CEO Steve Straus and Plum Creek director of real estate Doug Cole join GBI's board of directors.
| Jun 25, 2014
Taking a page from Lean manufacturing for improved design review processes
SPONSORED CONTENT As more building project teams look for ways to collaborate better, technology continues to provide solutions. Yet, as I learned from the experience of one of my customers, choosing the wrong technology can have an underwhelming effect, causing a team to simply swap out old challenges for new ones.
| Jun 24, 2014
From Babylon to Sydney: The evolution of the modern workspace [infographic]
This infographic, made by Sunica de Klerk and originally posted by ArchDaily, shows the evolution of the office from 2400 B.C. to the present day.
| Jun 24, 2014
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces plans for a Chicago Architecture Biennial
Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel announces plan to hold the Chicago Architecture Biennial in late 2015, intended to rival Venice's Biennale.
| Jun 24, 2014
Intuit begins work on LEED Platinum campus addition
Demolition will begin this week as a precursor to construction of Intuit's new addition to its Mountain View, Calif., campus. The first of two additions, a 185,000-sf building on Marine Way, is expected to begin construction in August.