MCEER UB-EERI MCEER SLC UB-CSEE

The EERI student chapter of the University at Buffalo (UB-EERI), the MCEER Student Leadership Council, the Networking and Education Programs of MCEER, and the University at Buffalo’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering jointly sponsor a series of seminars on a variety of topics related to earthquake hazard mitigation. The purpose of the seminar series is to widen accessibility to timely, technical presentations by students, researchers, visitors and affiliates of MCEER. All seminars are held at the University at Buffalo, and most are broadcast over the Internet in real-time. They can be viewed on the MCEER SLC website.

From Infancy to Maturity of Buckling Restrained Braces and Current Developments

Akira Wada, Ph.D., Professor and Head, Structural Engineering Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan, October 14, 2005

Dr. Wada began his talk by describing the buckling restrained brace, developed in Japan around 1980. The brace uses a core steel plate jacketed by concrete encased in a steel tube to restrain buckling, and has coating materials between the concrete and the core plate to prevent the transmission of axial force, giving it stable force deflection characteristics and enabling its compressive yield strength to be equal to tensile yield strength. Wada then discussed the studies in many countries and practical uses of the brace in buildings over the past twenty-plus years, ending his talk with current developments for steel structures.

Model Testing in Geomechanics Centrifuge and Hydraulic Gradient Approaches

Samuel Frydman, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel, September 23, 2005

Samuel Frydman began his lecture with an explanation of the difficulties of model testing in geotechnical engineering, and then described two methods used to overcome these problems: centrifuge modeling and application of hydraulic gradient. He explained that the latter method is less known, and then discussed two studies carried out at Technion University using that approach: the static, axial capacity of driven piles in sand, and the seismic response of piles in sand, performed on small models in a laminar model box fixed to a shaking table. He provided details of the experimental setup and some test results.