We have been working for many decades to improve
the performance of structures under seismic loading.
This is a collaborative project with the Japanese
research team that has been conducting large
scale shake table tests at the E-Defense facility.
They have been conducting full scale tests
on two three-story wood structures, typical
of urban environments in Tokyo.
E-Defense is the largest 3D shake table in
the world to conduct full scale tests on buildings.
You can have a whole building with every detail.
You can subject the building to a real,
recorded earthquake.
The ultimate goal for this project would be
that the decision maker including the designer,
the engineer, or homeowner, or policy maker,
would be to better understand the interplay
between every single component in residential
unit including structural, nonstructural components
and lifelines.
We have the unique opportunity to work with
a diverse team, including structural engineers
who have worked a lot in their career on the
global performance of wood residential infrastructure,
structural engineers who have worked on nonstructural
components including pipelines,
as well as geotechnical engineers.
This diverse group of researchers has the
opportunity of evaluating the performance
of the buildings to identify the interplay
of the various components to the structural
performance and restoration of the buildings.
The other goal we have is to use this information
to decrease the recovery time duration
after these disasters.
