Frame and Form

Every year the world is shaken by the news of a destructive earthquake where unfortunately the victims in the hundreds and material damage in the millions. One of the main reasons for having such a destructive earthquake is the high population density combined with the precariousness of structural design in developing areas.

The last day 14 on July Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center Japan welcomed the experiment of an American research project, the NEESWood project. Was reproduced to scale a building 7 plants with a structure based entirely on structural wood. Se I just took a major structural earthquake engineering experiments in history.

The Japanese lab has one of the largest earthquake simulator in the world, and as you can see in the following video, not deterred by subjecting the building to an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude of Judge.

According to the head of the investigation John van de Lindt, two of the main secrets of this structure 400.000 tons are: An optimized distribution of the fittings and the strategic location of 63 anclajes-amortiguadores verticales. One of the main problems frete wooden structures to dynamic loads of an earthquake is fragile behavior at the seams. With this type of test John van de Lindt and Team could identify areas of maximum tension and stiffness variations in the structure during an earthquake, facilitating a progressive optimization of structural design of the building.

The innovative design is intended to provide a new way in seismic structural engineering. The objective of this research is to provide an alternative to expensive and polluting steel and concrete structures. Wood is a resilient, flexible material with excellent mechanical properties, but most importantly, is a highly renewable resource, capturing CO2 instead of producing it and is accessible in developing areas. Responsible management of forests along with an adequate structural design could have realized a significant change in how earthquakes affect the cities.

This success marks a significant step in a major campaign to change the whole direction of earthquake engineering. So far the research lines focused on high-tech materials with extraordinary mechanical properties but with high production costs that restrict them to unique constructions (concretes superflexible, viscoelastic materials, special alloys, etc.). Now it seems that opens a possibility for a building sustainable antisocial, affordable and efficient.

Meta-Information:

Vídeos NEESWood Time-Lapse

Photo Gallery of the NEESWood project

Laboratory Center Web-Japanese E-DEFENSE [Eng]

Web NEES (Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) [Eng]

Interesting Wikipedia on Earthquake Engineering [Eng]

Photo Credit: John van de Lindt, Colorado State University