Media Releases

Demonstration of full-scale earthquake testing of a new seismic protection system

November 17, 2010

TORONTO, ON – Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Engi­neer­ing has devel­oped a nov­el, high-per­for­mance steel-cast Yield­ing Brace Sys­tem (YBS) for the design of new build­ings and the retro­fit of old­er ones, to with­stand earth­quake and blast load­ing. A demon­stra­tion of full-scale earth­quake test­ing of this new seis­mic pro­tec­tion sys­tem will take place this Fri­day, Novem­ber 19 at 1 p.m.

Devel­op­ment work under­tak­en over the past four years as part of Michael Gray’s doc­tor­al research, under the super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sors Jef­frey Pack­er and Con­stan­tin Christopou­los, is now in its final stage of val­i­da­tion. The test­ing on a full-scale one-storey frame is being car­ried out in the new­ly rede­vel­oped Struc­tur­al Test­ing Facil­i­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Civ­il Engi­neer­ing labs.

A brief overview of the $8‑million upgrade of the Struc­tur­al Test­ing Facil­i­ties, fol­lowed by a sum­ma­ry of the steel-cast­ing research per­formed over the past few years with an empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of the YBS sys­tem, will be pre­sent­ed pri­or to the full-scale real-time dynam­ic test.

EVENT DETAILS:

WHAT: A demon­stra­tion of the research and devel­op­ment work at U of T Engi­neer­ing in using steel cast­ings to solve chal­leng­ing struc­tur­al prob­lems, specif­i­cal­ly enhanc­ing the earth­quake resis­tance and resilience of steel-braced frames.

WHERE: Sand­ford Flem­ing Build­ing, 10 King’s Col­lege Road, Room 1009, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

WHEN: Fri­day, Novem­ber 19 from 1 to 2 p.m.

RSVP by Novem­ber 18, 2010.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Eliz­a­beth Raymer
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Media Rela­tions Coor­di­na­tor
Fac­ul­ty of Applied Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing
416–946-7257
elizabeth.raymer@utoronto.ca