Shaking things up: the journey towards testing a full-scale 10-storey wood building

Synopsis

Wood has thousands of years of history as a building material but has also been restricted by building codes and regulations following the industrial revolution. Wood building is viewed as a cost-effective, but less engineered system mainly for low-rise options. Mass timber construction is a relatively new way of utilizing wood material for modern, high-performance buildings at both large and small scales. It gives rise to the currently trending conception of wooden skyscrapers.

This presentation will provide an overview of multi-decade efforts by many researchers towards safer/stronger wood buildings. Specially, the planning process and research activities will be discussed on NSF-funded NHERI TallWood Project which aims at developing a seismic design method for tall wood buildings with a focus on achieving resilience.

In collaboration with industry partners, the project team tested a full-scale 10-storey mass timber building in 2023 in order to validate a resilience-based seismic design methodology for tall wood construction, enabling earthquake proof tall wood buildings.

About the Speakers

Dr Shiling Pei received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Colorado State University in December 2007 and joined the faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado School of Mines in Fall 2013. Before that, he worked as an assistant professor at South Dakota State University from 2010 to 2013. His research focused on multi-hazard mitigation through performance-based engineering, numerical modelling of structural dynamic behaviour, traditional and innovative timber systems, and large-scale dynamic testing.
Dr Pei received the 2012 ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize for his work on seismic performance of mid-rise wood frame building. He is the author of the Seismic Analysis Package for Woodframe Structures (SAPWood) as part of the NSF (NEESR) funded NEESWood project and served as one of the lead researchers in shake table testing of a full-scale 7-storey wood-steel hybrid building at Japan’s E-defense shake table.

Further information

This event is organised by SECED. The event will be chaired by Prof. Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype (Imperial College, London). Attendance at this meeting is free for members and non-members alike. 

Online attendance

This event will be broadcast online. Please register for the event prior to joining. The registration process will provide you with the link you need to join the main event.

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