Andre Filiatrault - US grants

This award provides funding to the University of California-San Diego under the direction of Dr. Ahmed-W.M Elgamal, for the support of a Combined Research-Curriculum Development project entitled, "Interactive Web-Based Experimental and Computational Learning Environments for Earthquake Engineering Research and Education." This project will integrate state-of-the-art earthquake engineering experimental and computational research into the undergraduate and graduate educational process. The proposed developments will employ Internet web-based technologies to allow for real-time video monitoring, control, and execution of appropriate cutting-edge experimental research efforts in earthquake engineering. Such setups include large shake-table earthquake experiments, centrifuge geomechanics tests, and dynamic tests of actual large buildings. Course modules will be developed to incorporate these unique experiments and associated computational-simulation codes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Appropriate quantitative instructional measures will be employed to dictate the direction and achieve the most effective educational goals. A multi-disciplinary approach will involve researchers from Earthquake Engineering, and appropriate Internet Networking and Instructional Technology experts. UCSD and Caltech conduct major earthquake experimentaion efforts, and constitutes an optimal environment for development of the proposed education and research objectives. Signicant collaboration opportunities will be facilitated through interaction between earthquake engineering and ongoing Internet-based research at the UCSD San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). On the national scene, dissemination will be facilitated through the the three US national earthquake centers (PEER, MAE, and MCEER).

Abstract
CMS 0117935
Seible

This award provides funding to the University of California, San Diego to conduct a national earthquake engineering research equipment workshop for the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). NEES is a project funded under the National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Equipment program and has been authorized by Congress for $81.9 million during FY 2000-FY 2004. In February 2001, NSF announced the NEES Earthquake Engineering Research Equipment Portfolio, Phase 1, consisting of eleven awards to ten institutions for $45 million. These eleven awards include new and upgraded shake tables, upgraded centrifuges, an upgraded wave basin for tsunami research, large-scale laboratory experimentation systems, and geotechnical and structural earthquake engineering field equipment. These equipment sites will be part of the NEES collaboratory and serve as national, shared-use earthquake engineering experimental research equipment installations, with teleobservation and teleoperation capabilities, networked together through the high performance Internet. In addition to providing access for telepresence at the NEES equipment sites, the network will use cutting-edge tools to link high performance computational and data storage facilities, including a curated repository for experimental and analytical earthquake engineering and related data. The network will also provide distributed physical and numerical simulation capabilities and resources for visualization of experimental and computed data. Through NEES, the earthquake engineering community will use these advanced experimental capabilities to test and validate more complex and comprehensive analytical and computer numerical models that will improve the seismic design and performance of our Nation's civil and mechanical systems. NSF intends to issue a Phase 2 program solicitation during 2001 to complete the NEES Equipment Portfolio. The purpose of this workshop is to bring the earthquake engineering community together to (a) summarize the NEES Equipment Portfolio, Phase 1, (b) assess other existing earthquake engineering facilities/equipment available in the United States, (c) identify possible missing components of the NEES Equipment Portfolio, Phase 1, and (d) recommend strategies to complete the NEES Equipment Portfolio during Phase 2. The earthquake engineering community can participate in this workshop via input on the web prior to the workshop and/or through attendance at the workshop. A report summarizing the recommendations from this workshop will be posted on the web for broad dissemination.

Abstract
CMS-0217293
Seible

The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) is a project funded under the National Science Foundation Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account. This cooperative agreement, awarded under NEES, establishes a NEES large high performance (LHP) outdoor shake table site at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and is an outcome of the peer review of proposals submitted to program solicitation NSF 01-164, "NEES: Earthquake Engineering Research Equipment, Phase 2." This outdoor shake table will be a 7.6 m x 12.2 m long single (horizontal) degree-of-freedom system. The table will have a peak horizontal velocity of 1.8 m/s, maximum stroke of +/-0.75 m, maximum gravity (vertical) payload of 200 MN, maximum overturning moment of 50 MN-m, force capacity of actuators of 6.8 MN, and a frequency bandwidth from 0-20 Hz. The major equipment for the LHP shake table facility consists of servocontrolled dynamically-rated actuators with large-servo valves, a large power supply, a vertical load/overturning moment bearing system, a digital three-variable real-time controller, concrete foundation and reaction mass, and weatherproofing system. The facility will be the only outdoor shake table in the U.S. and will enable large/full-scale testing of structural systems and soil-foundation-structure interaction that cannot be readily extrapolated from testing at smaller scale, or under quasi-static or pseudo-dynamic test conditions, as well as testing large-scale systems to observe their response under near source ground motion. The LHP outdoor shake table will be located 15 km from campus at the UCSD Camp Elliott field site. This two-acre site was selected so that the shake table could be used in conjunction with an adjacent soil pit and laminar shear soil box being provided by the California Department of Transportation. This site will allow room for multiple test specimens to be constructed and instrumented before placement on the shake table. A 177 kN rough terrain crane will be provided at Camp Elliott for loading, unloading, and everyday construction purposes. For heavier lifting capabilities, an 880 kN crane will be available on an as needed rental basis, with the individual experiment requiring the larger crane to cover this cost. This equipment will be operational by September 30, 2004, and will be managed as a national shared-use NEES equipment site, with teleobservation and teleoperation capabilities, to provide new earthquake engineering research testing capabilities through 2014. Shared-use access and training will be coordinated through the NEES Consortium. UCSD is providing $1,363,000 in cost sharing for this facility. UCSD will integrate this shake table equipment into its research program involving undergraduate and graduate students, Department of Structural Engineering curriculum, and K-12 and general public outreach. The University will also provide training opportunities for outside faculty, students, and practitioners through web-based tutorials and on-site training.

This award provides funding to the State University of New York, University at Buffalo (UB) to acquire three 22 kip, hydraulic dynamic actuators (each with a stroke of +/- 1 meter, velocity of +/-2.5 meters/second, and acceleration of +/- 3 g's) and a one-story test structure for nonstructural component testing at the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) UB real-time hybrid seismic testing facility that will be operated by NEES Consortium, Inc., as a national shared use facility during FY 2005 - FY 2014. This equipment will be used in conjunction with the 9.1-meter tall by 12-meter wide reaction wall, 12-meter by 24-meter strong floor, and the extensive array of dynamic/seismic sensors available at the UB NEES facility. The equipment capabilities were selected based on a study of motions observed in selected buildings during past earthquakes. This equipment will be available to the earthquake engineering research community through the NEES Consortium, Inc., UB NEES facility. This award is funded by the NSF NEES Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) project and is a component of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP)

Abstract - 0529903, van de Lindt

While woodframe structures have historically performed well with regard to life safety in regions of moderate to high seismicity, these low-rise structures have sustained significant structural and non-structural damage in recent earthquakes. The height of woodframe construction is currently limited to approximately four stories, due to the lack of understanding of the dynamic response of taller (mid-rise) woodframe construction, non-structural limitations such as material fire requirements, and potential damage considerations for non-structural finishes. Current building code requirements for engineered wood construction around the world are not based on a global seismic design philosophy. Instead, wood elements are designed independently of each other without consideration of the influence that their stiffness and strength have on the other structural components of the structural system. Furthermore, load paths in woodframe construction arising during earthquake shaking are not well understood. These factors, rather than economic considerations, have limited the use of wood to low-rise construction and have reduced the economical competitiveness of the wood industry in the United States and abroad relative to the steel and concrete industries. This project will develop a performance-based seismic design (PBSD) philosophy to safely increase the height of woodframe structures in active seismic zones of the United States as well as mitigating damage to low-rise woodframe structures. During year one, full-scale seismic benchmark tests of a two-story woodframe townhouse will be performed using the two three-dimensional shake tables at the NEES SUNY-Buffalo equipment site. As the largest full-scale, three-dimensional shake table test performed in the United States, the test results will serve as a benchmark for both woodframe performance and nonlinear models for seismic analysis of woodframe structures. These efficient analysis tools will provide a platform upon which to build the PBSD philosophy. The PBSD methodology will rely on the development of key performance requirements such as limiting interstory deformations. The method will incorporate the use of economical seismic protection systems such as supplemental dampers and base isolation systems in order to further increase energy dissipation capacity and/or increase the natural period of the woodframe buildings. A real-time hybrid test will be performed by linking the fixed-based townhouse structure on the Buffalo NEES shake table with a reduced scale base isolation bearing tested simultaneously on a smaller shake table at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The societal impacts of this new PBSD procedure, aimed at increasing the height of woodframe structures equipped with economical seismic protection systems, will also be investigated. Once the PBSD philosophy for mid-rise woodframe structures has been developed, it will be applied to the seismic design of a mid-rise (five or six-story) multi-family residential woodframe apartment building. This mid-rise woodframe structure will be constructed and tested at full-scale in a series of shake table tests on the Japanese E-Defense shake table in Miki City, Japan. The use of the E-Defense shake table, the largest 3-D shake table in the world, is necessary to accommodate the height and payload of the mid-rise building. There will be a request in the United States and in the international earthquake engineering community for payload projects to be conducted during this series of tests. The intellectual merit of NEESWood is the development of a new design philosophy that will provide a logical, economical basis for the design of mid-rise woodframe construction. The broader impacts of NEESWood are that it will provide a seminal advancement in seismic design of woodframe construction as well as the full-scale seismic testing of structural systems including dynamic distributed testing between two sites. When this challenge is successfully met, mid-rise woodframe construction may be an economic option in seismic regions around the United States and the world.

This award is an outcome of the National Science Foundation 07-506 program solicitation "George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Research" competition. This project is led by the University of Nevada, Reno, and includes subawards to the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, North Carolina State University, Rutherford and Chekene, State University of New York at Buffalo, and University of California-San Diego. Nonstructural systems represent 75 percent of the loss exposure of U.S. buildings to earthquakes, and account for over 78 percent of the total estimated national annualized earthquake loss. A very widely used nonstructural system is the ceiling-piping-partition system. Ceiling-piping-partition systems consist of several components and subsystems, have complex three-dimensional geometries and complicated boundary conditions because of their multiple attachment points to the main structure, and are spread over large areas in all directions. Their seismic response, their interaction with the structural system they are suspended from or attached to, and their failure mechanisms are not well understood. Moreover, their damage levels and fragilities are poorly defined due to the lack of system-level experimental studies and modeling capability. Their seismic behavior cannot be dependably analyzed and predicted due to a lack of numerical simulation tools. In addition, modern protective technologies, which are readily used in structural systems, have never been applied to these systems. This project integrates multidisciplinary system-level studies that will develop, for the first time, a simulation capability and implementation process for enhancing the seismic performance of the ceiling-piping-partition nonstructural system. The experimental program will use the NEES equipment sites at the University of Nevada, Reno and State University of New York at Buffalo to conduct subsystem and system-level full-scale experiments. A payload project using the Japanese E-Defense shake table facility in Miki, Hyogo, Japan, is planned in coordination with Japanese researchers. Integrated with the experimental effort will be a numerical simulation program that will develop experimentally verified analytical models, establish system and subsystem fragility functions, and develop visualization tools that will provide engineering educators and practitioners with sketch-based modeling capabilities. Public policy investigations are designed to support the implementation of the research results, including the use of representative index buildings and urban planning tools to estimate the cost benefits of the new protective devices and design concepts at both the individual building and the metropolitan area scales.

The results will address implementation barriers and provide public policy rationales for amendments to building codes and standards and related guidelines. The project collaborates closely with industry through a Practice Committee consisting of experts representing all aspects of the ceiling-piping-partition nonstructural systems. This project includes a science museum interface with K-12 students and the general public; summer engineering camps for minority and female students; hands on experience to students of a community college; outreach programs to engineers, architects and industry practitioners; and plans for revisions to building codes, standards, and performance-based earthquake engineering guidelines. Data from this project will be made available through the NEES data repository (http://www.nees.org).

This award is an outcome of the NSF 09-524 program solicitation ''George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Research (NEESR)" competition and includes Cornell University (lead institution) and the University at Buffalo (UB), State University of New York and California State Los Angeles University (CSULA). This project will utilize the NEES equipment sites at Cornell University and University at Buffalo.

Lifelines include underground water, waste and storm disposal, natural gas, and liquid fuel pipelines, electric power cables, and telecommunication conduits that are critical for public health, security, and economic well-being. A large part of US lifeline systems are old and have deteriorated. To restore the health of these aging systems, special technologies have been developed to insert pipe linings, composed of polymers, into existing underground lifelines without digging them up and disrupting surrounding communities. The research will substantially improve the performance of underground lifelines during both earthquakes and daily use by investigating how polymeric linings improve their resistance to ground shaking and ground failure. The research involves a strong university-industry partnership with pipe lining companies, public utilities, and engineering firms. The testing capabilities at the Cornell NEES Site are ideally suited for simulating ground rupture effects on pipelines to reproduce upper bound conditions of deformation in the field. The dual shake table capabilities at the University at Buffalo NEES Site are uniquely qualified for simulating seismic wave interaction with pipelines, especially for replicating the critical condition of closely spaced weak joints and defects. Guided by full-scale simulations, computer models will be developed, including 3-D models of the composite pipeline, liner, and soil system. The intellectual merit of this award involves combing state-of-the-art, full-scale experiments with advanced computational procedures to develop and validate the next generation analytical models. These models will support design and construction to apply in situ lining technologies for seismic risk reduction as well as improve design and construction practices associated with liner rehabilitation of critical underground infrastructure. The research will also explore the use of flexible electronics to embed micro-sensors, and thus create "intelligence," in lining systems.

The broader impacts of this research can be appreciated by recognizing that for water and wastewater systems alone, there are more than 2.1 million km of pipelines throughout the US, with nearly half consisting of cast iron pipelines that are at least 50-100 years old. There is a strong need to rehabilitate aging, underground lifelines, especially those located in areas with seismic risk and constructed of brittle materials such as cast iron. The proposed research has the capacity to reduce utility system costs through the extension of pipeline service life with intelligent liners that increase earthquake resistance, thus enhancing public safety and creating new markets for the restoration of underground assets. Broader impacts of the research include an integrated educational program aimed at underrepresented students (both women and minority) at CSULA and work force development in coordination with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). Two undergraduate courses at CSULA will be organized around the earthquake vulnerability and design of lifeline systems, with a major experimental component involving full-scale lined pipe tests at the CSULA instructional laboratory. At the same time, an annual short course will be given by project PIs at LADWP to address the seismic design of water supplies. Webinars will be presented through the NEES operations manager, NEEScomm, to convey both research findings and planning/design principles as developed through the annual short course, and videos of course lectures will be available at Cornell and UB NEES web sites. An integral part of the outreach activities involves industry collaboration and advice from practicing professionals to support technology transfer and disseminate research findings into engineering practice.

Data from this project will be archived and made available to the public through the NEES data repository. This award is part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP).