Civil engineering and architectural engineering students recently constructed a scale model of a building and walked away with first place in a national seismic design competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. The competition was hosted through the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), which evaluated the earthquake resistance of the structure in mid-February.
“It was a good experience for both departments. Students in each major were able to achieve a different perspective on how to approach this problem,” said Lopez, lead analyst of the research.
Civil engineering students Neda Saeedy, Robert Thompson, Jeff Stallman, Keith Robertson, Steven Wolfe and Renee Morales, along with architectural engineering students Alan Tonissen, Eduardo Lopez and Joseph Thompson, used it as a senior project, worked in a collaborative effort.
EERI assigned guidelines for project submission in mid-November. After several months of conceptualizing and designing, they finalized construction of the building and named it Mustang Tower.
The team chose the design based on seismic analysis, which is a computer generated response of the amount of movement a building will endure when it experiences the impact of an earthquake. The team shook the building from side to side at low and high frequencies to determine the resonance frequency or greatest impact. After designs were finalized, a 3-D computerized model was created and a 72:1 scale, 5-foot tall multistory office building was constructed with wood.
Stallman, who designed the team poster, said the group agreed to make the building light and keep the design simple.
These qualities, Stallman said, made the acceleration to the earthquake a lot smaller compared to other groups.
Tonissen, team captain of the architectural engineers, said that seven of the 18 schools who competed were in the top ten engineering schools in the nation.
The building was evaluated on how much damage it suffered during computer simulations of the devastating El Centro, Northridge and Coby earthquakes on a shake table by measuring acceleration of places on the roof.
The team’s construction survived computer simulations of all earthquakes and encountered a sine wave, a back and forth shaking of the table until it broke. The combination of the team’s lowest peak acceleration and lowest drift ratio won the contest.
Points were tallied for architectural appeal, sportsmanship and overall presentation of the seismic design.
Tonissen said he was excited to hear Cal Poly won first place.
“I knew we were going to do well because when the shaking occurred our structure was a lot more flexible than the other buildings,” he said.
Thompson, team captain of the civil engineers, said that at first the competition was slightly discouraging.
“After coming away with first place we feel really encouraged about our process from concept to design to construction,” Thompson said.
“Last year we didn’t do very well, so it was a really good feeling to go from last place to first place in one year,” Naeedy said. “We definitely made a comeback. We’re hoping that next year we’ll be able to get some companies to sponsor us.”
