Development of high-performance earthquake resilient tall buildings

With rapid population growth worldwide, major cities around the world are seeing an upsurge in high-rise building construction. At the same time, there is an increased awareness about the importance of designing buildings so that they will have limited damage due to strong earthquake shaking. An innovative structural system is proposed that utilizes an outrigger in combination with a conventional reinforced concrete (RC) core-wall system. To improve the seismic performance of the structure, innovative fuses are added to the outriggers to dissipate the sudden surge of the earthquake energy. In addition, replaceable coupling beams are used to ensure the damaged portions of the structure can be easily inspected and quickly repaired after strong earthquake shaking. In this research, innovative structural fuses will be developed through international research collaboration between the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility Canada (EERF) and Tongji University (headquarter of ILEE center). Full-scale components will be systematically designed and tested at the EERF facility in Canada, while large-scale shaking table tests will be conducted at Tongji University to validate the overall seismic performance of the proposed system. The proposed research project will significantly contribute to the development of high-performance earthquake resilient tall buildings.

Faculty Supervisor:

Tony Yang

Student:

Partner:

Tongji University

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Construction and infrastructure

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: