SE Literature café (6):A quick look at “Terzic, V., & Mahin, S. A. (2017). Using PBEE to assess and improve performance of different structural systems for low-rise steel buildings, International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering, Vol.7, No.4,532-544″ There are different structural systems to resist earthquakes, just like many “models” of electronic gadgets and brands of peanut butter (which the latter is very confusing). Each structural system has its pros and cons: one is cheaper, but it is pricier to fix when damaged. Another one is cheap and easy to fix, but does not work great for large earthquakes, and … Continue reading I prefer to isolate myself now: What structural system works better for low-rise steel buildings?

SE literature café (5): a quick look at “Saade, M. R. M., Guest, G., & Amor, B. (2020). Comparative whole building LCAs: How far are our expectations from the documented evidence?. Building and Environment, 167, 106449. There are certain observations (or “rules of thumb” if you would like) in each industry that “supposedly” have been made so many times, they become common knowledge: “customers will be interested in buying your product, and you benefit from sales in the long run” (link), “Avocado goes well on a crunch toast” “, etc. In the AEC industry, the same goes for “environmental” performance: ”wood is … Continue reading “I’m pretty sure wood is better than steel”: Revisiting rules of thumb and perceptions in AEC industry

SE Literature Café (4) A quick look at Joyner, M. D., & Sasani, M. (2020). Building performance for earthquake resilience. Engineering Structures, 210, 110371. Seismic resiliency is a system problem where all system components should perform well: buildings, the water and electricity infrastructure, and the road networks that connect these systems. From a structural engineering perspective, resiliency starts from building better structures.  But how can an architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) team do that? Following codes requirements and engineering intuition, the structural engineer makes decisions that balance stiffness, strength and deformation capacity of building components, and consequently the building. Stiffness helps reduce damage to partitions … Continue reading Strength, stiffness, or deformation capacity: What makes a building more resilient?

A quick look at the article: Porter, K. A. (2021). Should we build better? The case for resilient earthquake design in the United States. Earthquake Spectra, 37(1), 523-544. Buildings, and other elements in our infrastructure, are essentially a product. These products meet certain regulations (AKA building codes) to be usable by the public. The focus of these regulations is on safety. While safety standards are important, they are not the only things we care about: we want our phones not to explode because of overheating, but most certainly, this is not our only criteria to buy a phone. Meanwhile, in a hypothetical … Continue reading Why build better? Making a case for seismic resiliency in the US

A quick look at the article: Hashemi, M. J., Al-Attraqchi, A. Y., Kalfat, R., & Al-Mahaidi, R. (2019). Linking seismic resilience into sustainability assessment of limited-ductility RC buildings. Engineering Structures, 188, 121-136. A kind of intro Non-ductile concrete frames (read old frames that were not really designed for earthquakes) are in the spotlight of resiliency assessments. Often these types of studies aim to understand what happens to these structures if the big one occurs. To answer this question,  numerical structural models are coupled with probabilistic models. This  coupling links impacts (what earthquakes do to the building), exposure (what you can expect from … Continue reading SE Literature Café (2): A party of four: resiliency, sustainability, hybrid simulations, and retrofitting non-ductile concrete frames