Human-driven Machine-automation of Engineering Research

This paper presents a framework for efficiently producing engineering research in a global collaborative effort in a rigorous scientific manner. The proposed framework reduces subjective analysis, automates several mundane research tasks and provides a suitable formal structure for efficient information sharing and collaboration. The implementation of the framework involves multiple research groups setting up different web-servers that can perform the steps of the scientific method and automatically determine the quality and value of new research by directly communicating between servers via public and private Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) using a set of object-oriented protocols. The automation of many mundane research tasks (e.g. data manipulation), would allow researchers to focus more on the novel aspects of their research efforts. The increased clarity around the quality and value of research would allow the research efforts of individuals and available research funding to be better disbursed. The paper discusses the major aspects of the scientific method, object-orientated programming, the application of the proposed research framework for experimental/analytical/numerical engineering research, some of the potential benefits and drawbacks, as well as the current state of implementation

Potential relevance of differential settlements in earthquake-induced liquefaction damage assessment

The assessment of vulnerability of buildings subjected to earthquake-induced liquefaction requires the definition of an integrated damage scale accounting both for ground motion damage and ground permanent movements, which cause rigid-body settlement and tilt of the building but also flexural demand on members due to differential settlement of pad footings. Nevertheless, most of the existing procedures for the estimation of differential settlements rely only in soil characteristics, thus neglecting the influence of building stiffness on the soil-structure interaction. In the present work, based on simplified modelling of soil-structure variability and on preliminary assumption of force distributions, representative values of members' demand due to differential settlement are proposed. A simple approach relying on the structure-to-soil stiffness ratio and the equivalent soil degradation extent under pad footings is adopted. The methodology is calibrated by means of a parametric linear analysis for a set of planar frames. Relative flexural demand due to differential settlements normalised to the seismic flexural demand are obtained. Results show that their relevance may not be very severe, thus damage assessment of differential settlements could be likely accounted separately from flexural and rigid-body demand