UC project looking at impact of Wellington earthquake
UC summer project looking at impact of Wellington
earthquake building movements
November 17, 2013
A
University of Canterbury (UC) summer research project is
looking at the impact of building movements in the July and
August Seddon earthquakes.
UC civil and natural
resources engineer Dr Brendon Bradley says the project is
vitally important as seismic response of buildings and other
structures during earthquakes is highly complex with many
assumptions made in conventional seismic design and
assessment.
``Incorrect assumptions can be
catastrophic due to excessive floor accelerations and
building displacements. One of the principal means by
which such assumptions can be assessed is by making use of
the actual seismic response of buildings which have been
‘wired-up’ with instruments to measure their response
during earthquakes.
``Several
instrumented-buildings in Wellington were subjected to
strong ground motions in the Seddon earthquakes. The aim of
this project is to use signal processing analysis and simple
structural analysis to assess common assumptions which are
used in the design and assessment of
structures.
``We will have a better understanding
of the dynamics of the response of simple systems and how
much buildings swayed in the magnitude 6.6 July and August
Seddon earthquakes this year following our
research.’’
Dr Bradley and UC summer
scholarship student Ethan Thomson will research in the
coming months to study the way in which Wellington buildings
swayed in the earthquakes.
They will focus on 10
Wellington commercial and industrial buildings of different
heights and construction styles.
The project will
make use of buildings equipped with seismic instrumentation,
which records building movement at multiple locations at the
time the earthquakes occurred.
``The observed
records will be used to scrutinise the accuracy of numerical
models which are typically used in the design and assessment
of structures for earthquakes. Based on an understanding
of the limitations of conventional methods, improved
procedures can be developed for use in the future. The
pilot project will span about six months and results are
expected in the first half of next year.’’
UC
masters student Sam McHattie and Dr Bradley examined two
buildings which were fixed with instruments before the 2010
and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes – the UC physics building
and the CBD police station. Lessons learned from examining
those buildings are also being up taken by the engineering
profession.
Dr Bradley recently received $800,000
of a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship to investigate the
mysteries of unresolved ground motion and geotechnical case
histories from the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. His research
will have a national and international impact in the
assessment and mitigation of earthquake hazards in major
cities.
About 150 UC students will be undertaking
scholarship research projects this summer. On top of that
well over 700 students have enrolled in more than 80 summer
courses.
Around 600 tradesmen will be on campus
over the summer as the University’s building remediation
programme ramps
up.
ENDS