PEER Testbed Study on a Laboratory Building: Exercising Seismic Performance Assessment

From 2002 to 2004 (years five and six of a ten-year funding cycle), the PEER Center organized the majority of its research around six testbeds. Two buildings and two bridges, a campus, and a transportation network were selected as case studies to “exercise” the PEER performance-based earthquake engineering methodology. All projects involved interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each producing data to be used by other colleagues in their research. The testbeds demonstrated that it is possible to create the data necessary to populate the PEER performancebased framing equation, linking the hazard analysis, the structural analysis, the development of damage measures, loss analysis, and decision variables. This report describes one of the building testbeds—the UC Science Building. The project was chosen to focus attention on the consequences of losses of laboratory contents, particularly downtime. The UC Science testbed evaluated the earthquake hazard and the structural performance of a well-designed recently built reinforced concrete laboratory building using the OpenSees platform. Researchers conducted shake table tests on samples of critical laboratory contents in order to develop fragility curves used to analyze the probability of losses based on equipment failure. The UC Science testbed undertook an extreme case in performance assessment—linking performance of contents to operational failure. The research shows the interdependence of building structure, systems, and contents in performance assessment, and highlights where further research is needed. The Executive Summary provides a short description of the overall testbed research program, while the main body of the report includes summary chapters from individual researchers. More extensive research reports are cited in the reference section of each chapter

Voronoi-Like grid systems for tall buildings

In the context of innovative patterns for tall buildings, Voronoi tessellation is certainly worthy of interest. It is an irregular biomimetic pattern based on the Voronoi diagram, which derives from the direct observation of natural structures. The paper is mainly focused on the application of this nature-inspired typology to load-resisting systems for tall buildings, investigating the potential of non-regular grids on the global mechanical response of the structure. In particular, the study concentrates on the periodic and non-periodic Voronoi tessellation, describing the procedure for generating irregular patterns through parametric modeling and illustrates the homogenization-based approach proposed in the literature for dealing with unconventional patterns. To appreciate the consistency of preliminary design equations, numerical and analytical results are compared. Moreover, since the mechanical response of the building strongly depends on the parameters of the microstructure, the paper focuses on the influence of the grid arrangement on the global lateral stiffness, therefore on the displacement constraint, which is an essential requirement in the design of tall buildings. To this end, five case studies, accounting for different levels of irregularity and relative density, are generated and analyzed through static and modal analysis in the elastic field. In addition, the paper focuses on the mechanical response of a pattern with gradual rarefying density to evaluate its applicability to tall buildings. Displacement based optimizations are carried out to assess the adequate member cross sections that provide the maximum contribution in restraining deflection with the minimum material weight. The results obtained for all the models generated are compared and discussed to outline a final evaluation of the Voronoi structures. In addition to the wind loading scenario, the efficiency of the building model with varying density Voronoi pattern, is tested for seismic ground motion through a response spectrum analysis. The potential applications of Voronoi tessellation for tall buildings is demonstrated for both regions with high wind load conditions and areas of high seismicity

Not the Whole Story of the National Literacy Strategy: A Response to Dominic Wyse

There is evidence that the National Literacy Strategy has led to a sustained increase in literacy attainment, especially in reading, although recent international comparisons also suggest some additional issues regarding pupil performance in England. The relative success of the NLS may at least partly lie in the policy application of several complementary areas of educational research, a suggestion disputed by Dominic Wyse (2003). However, his critical commentary is marred by important omissions, particularly of reference to debates about the teaching of reading and to the statutory status of the National Curriculum for English. His alternative suggestions on the use of ‘child development’ evidence lack methodological detail and are only partly formulated

Aerodynamic characteristics of the 40- by 80/80- by 120-foot wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center

The design and testing of vane sets and air-exchange inlet for the 40 x 80/80 x 120-ft wind tunnel at NASA Ames are reported. Boundary-layer analysis and 2D and 3D inviscid panel codes are employed in computer models of the system, and a 1/10-scale 2D facility and a 1/50-scale 3D model of the entire wind tunnel are used in experimental testing of the vane sets. The results are presented in graphs, photographs, drawings, and diagrams are discussed. Generally good agreement is found between the predicted and measured performance

Visual programming for structural assessment of out-of-plane mechanisms in historic masonry structures

This work aims at proposing a novel procedure for the seismic assessment of historic masonry structures which is computationally efficient and does not rely on destructive material tests. Digital datasets describing the geometric configuration of historic masonry structures are employed to automatically generate a non-linear Finite Element (FE) model and investigate on possible collapse modes. A configuration of failure surfaces is therefore detected through the Control Surface Method (CSM), which is here proposed for the first time. In a following step of the analysis, structural macroblocks are identified, whereas an upper bound limit analysis approach is employed to estimate the structural capacity of the structure. Genetic Algorithms are also employed to detect the actual failure mode for the structure. The procedure is implemented into a visual coding environment, which allows one to parametrically explore all possible failure surfaces and immediately visualize the effects of the user assumptions. This is particularly suited to support a decisions-making process which strongly relay on engineering judgement. The procedure is validated by the analysis of two benchmark cases, whose results are presented and discussed

Methods and approaches for blind test predictions of out-of-plane behavior of masonry walls: a numerical comparative study

Earthquakes cause severe damage to masonry structures due to inertial forces acting in the normal direction to the plane of the walls. The out-of-plane behavior of masonry walls is complex and depends on several parameters, such as material and geometric properties of walls, connections between structural elements, the characteristics of the input motions, among others. Different analytical methods and advanced numerical modeling are usually used for evaluating the out-of-plane behavior of masonry structures. Furthermore, different types of structural analysis can be adopted for this complex behavior, such as limit analysis, pushover, or nonlinear dynamic analysis.Aiming to evaluate the capabilities of different approaches to similar problems, blind predictions were made using different approaches. For this purpose, two idealized structures were tested on a shaking table and several experts on masonry structures were invited to present blind predictions on the response of the structures, aiming at evaluating the available tools for the out-of-plane assessment of masonry structures. This article presents the results of the blind test predictions and the comparison with the experimental results, namely in terms of formed collapsed mechanisms and control outputs (PGA or maximum displacements), taking into account the selected tools to perform the analysis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio