North Carolina State Ph.D. Students win the blind prediction competition related to earthquake engineering research

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By NC State Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering on November 24, 2021

A team of six Ph.D. Students from North Carolina State University’s Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering have won the researchers category in the 2021 Pacific Earthquake Research Center (PEER) Blind Forecasting Competition. The NC State team was led by Dr. Mervyn Kowalski at the University, Christopher W. Clark Distinguished Professor. There was a three-way tie for the winner in this category. This year’s competition, called the Periodic Semi-Static Test of a Reinforced Concrete Column, focused on predicting the response of a reinforced concrete shaft subjected to lateral deformation.

“In late September, I received an email from the competition organizer asking me to submit a blind prediction for the competition,” Kowalski says. “I decided to ask my whole group if they wanted to spend the afternoon working on it as a group. Almost all of the group agreed, and I used it as an opportunity to teach them evaluation techniques that rely on engineering judgment, simple models and manual calculations. We spent a few hours on it, on The most – all simple calculations.

Their analyzes indicate that the shaft will suffer brittle shear failure at a relatively low level of lateral deformation, Kowalski says.

“While we were reasonably confident that we would come close to the correct answer, we were surprisingly one of the winners. It is gratifying to confirm that simple manual calculations that rely on geometric judgment do a good job, especially for simple structures. Rather than an access method of analysis complex, it is often best to start with simple tools.”

PEER received 116 submissions from all over the world. Ph.D. Six CCEE. Students involved in the accounts included Taylor Brodbeck, Diego Martinez, Diego Sosa, Lina Espinosa, Ana Bona, and Julio Samoa. The competition was based on an experimental test of a concrete column conducted in the year 2020.

“The test shaft represents the gravity shafts common in concrete buildings designed prior to the 1990s,” according to PEER. “We hope that the results of this survey will help drive improvements in the assessment of tangible buildings, with the goal of making our communities safer in earthquake situations.”

This article was originally published by North Carolina State University on November 23, 2021. Reprinted with permission from the North Carolina Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering.

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