Evening Meetings

This is the first event organised by the SECED Young Members Group. In this meeting, we aim to highlight the role of young researchers and professionals in the series of devastating earthquakes from 2015-2016, specifically those in Italy, Japan, Ecuador and Nepal.

This talk presents the seismic response of the La Villita dam in Mexico. Analysis of actual field data along with relevant numerical analyses are presented and discussed to obtain an understanding of the behaviour of the dam. Several issues related to the general seismic performance of dams are also discussed.

This talk will explore issues relating to the impact on building fragility of hazard-consistent record selection and hazard disaggregation, and uncertainty characterisation in loss metrics and fragility analysis. It will highlights shortcomings in the state-of-art and the implications of this for earthquake loss modelling.

In this evening meeting, Heather Riley from Atkins will present the computational methods developed for seismic analysis of nuclear reactor cores within the so-called GCORE methodology. She will also describe how the methods have been validated by means of independent shaker table testing of scaled reactor core models.

In this meeting, Dr Stergios A Mitoulis (University of Surrey) will present research on the response of integral abutment bridges (IABs) under various loads including earthquake excitation. The presentation will cover smart designs for IABs with recycled materials as a means to minimise the soil-structure interaction effects. The presentation will conclude with recent findings on the multi-hazard risk assessment of IABs. Future research and design opportunities will be discussed on the basis of the ongoing research.

The increasing quality and decreasing cost of mobile mapping technologies, combined with the flexibility of custom-made, web-based collaborative platforms, allow for a new paradigm in data collection and integration to be developed. Several activities carried out over recent years provide preliminary evidence that support such a paradigm. Operational applications in the field of risk assessment and post-earthquake reconnaissance will be shown and discussed.

This event, which is organised by the SECED Young Members, will examine the application of probabilistic seismic hazard assesments in the nuclear industry.

Site response analysis is commonly performed to account for local site effects on ground motion propagation during an earthquake. Most site response analyses focus on the horizontal ground motion, but in reality, the ground is simultaneously subjected to shaking in both the horizontal and vertical directions during an earthquake. The talk will provide an overview of fundamental aspects of vertical site response analysis. A practical methodology allowing the use of existing software will be presented. Finally, the impact of the vertical component of ground motion will be demonstrated in three-dimensional analyses for a KiK-net down-hole array in Japan.

The Seismic Risk Classification introduced in Italy in February 2017 has a structure similar to the Energy Performance Classification of Buildings and allows ranking common buildings in 7 classes (from A to G). To stimulate the adoption of risk mitigation measures, together with the Seismic Classification, the Italian government has introduced an interesting tax deduction scheme where the amount of deductible costs is based on the level of seismic risk reduction achieved through retrofitting works. In this evening meeting, Prof. Paulo Riva will illustrate the approach adopted for Seismic Classification of buildings in Italy, and the tax deduction scheme that accompanies it.

On day two (23 October) of the Global Engineering Congress, join this free-to-attend evening lecture supported by SECED and intended to showcase a number of recent projects on multi-hazard risk and resilience assessment of school facilities in developing countries.

Dynamic engineering is too often used to refer to earthquake engineering. However, many of the SECED young members are dynamic engineers of a different and widely varied nature. We aim to highlight the breadth of dynamics as well as the work and research currently being performed by three of our young members in vibration, offshore and blast engineering. After the evening talks, there will be networking in the ICE bar.

The 2010-2011 Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquake sequence gave rise to a paradigm shift in performance-based design criteria towards a low-damage design philosophy. This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances towards a low-damage design. Examples of real applications of low-damage design in New Zealand, using concrete, timber (engineered wood), steel or a combination of these materials, will be presented. These form examples of the successful transfer of performance-based seismic design approach and advanced technology from theory to practice in line with the broader objective of building resilience.

This presentation will provide an overview of the revised Technical Assessment Guide for External Hazards, published by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), focussing on the Annex 1 document, which concerns the seismic hazard. The presentation will highlight the key areas that have benefitted from greater detail and clarity. The presentation will focus mainly on seismic hazard and the definition of an appropriate seismic design basis; however, it will also touch on other related areas such as capable faulting and aspects of seismic design. The presentation will conclude by highlighting areas of future development where the guidance is expected to improve in future revisions.

Short circuit faults happening inside electrical substations can induce strong dynamic effects on the high-voltage equipment and supporting structures. This evening lecture will present the finite element methodology developed by Mott MacDonald to capture the dynamic behaviour of the substation equipment and structures under short circuit dynamic loading. The lecture will also present some of the modelling approach used to idealise the dynamic properties of the equipment and structures.

This talk by Federica Greco will present the case study of seismic retrofitting of four Peruvian historic earthen buildings. The methodology, challenges and main results of the seismic retrofitting will be described. The case study builds upon the experience gathered from previous projects as well as conclusions drawn from the Pisco, Peru 2007 earthquake assessment, and detailed construction assessment of Peruvian historic earthen buildings.

In his talk, Randolph Langenbach will begin with his recent work in Nepal after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, covering the performance of historic masonry buildings in Kathmandu. He will describe a technique called “Gabion Bands”, which provides a means for people to rebuild their houses with materials readily at hand. He will then go on to explore the problems of moment frame structures with walls of weak masonry infill. He will describe the efforts to separate the masonry infill walls from the frames, to the more recent recognition of the need to embrace these walls as a strategic part of the engineering of these buildings. This discussion will include his concept called “Armature Crosswalls.”

Two consecutive lectures will take place at this event. In the first lecture, Prof. Tiziana Rossetto (University College London) will present recent advances in the assessment of buildings subjected to earthquake and tsunami. In the second lecture, Prof. Gopal S. P. Madabhushi (University of Cambridge) will discuss the use of high gravity centrifuge tests as a means to investigate soil liquefaction phenomena.

Hydraulic fracturing of an unconventional shale reservoir in northwest England began in October 2018, over seven years after induced seismicity related to the first such operations in the UK resulted in a moratorium. In this presentation, the speaker will present data from a dense network of sensors to show that seismicity rates increase significantly during operations. Current UK regulations require operators to temporarily stop injection if any events exceed a magnitude of 0.5 ML – however, both magnitude uncertainty and incompleteness of the earthquake catalogue may create a considerable problem for both operators and regulators, highlighting the problem of reliable characterisation of induced seismicity during operations.

In this meeting, EEFIT and the SECED Young Members join together to explore what true resilience means. The speakers will draw on their experiences from Africa, South America and Asia and give valuable insights into how communities may be empowered to prepare, respond and recover from disruptive challenges such as earthquakes.

The historical record of earthquakes is a crucial data resource for seismic hazard analysis. In every region, the largest events are rare, and difficult to parameterize. Where such events are associated with the ruptures of mapped faults, defining the extent of possible fault ruptures is an important task which is guided by historical precedent. Traditionally, in seismic hazard analysis, if a particular rupture geometry had not been observed, it was not included in a seismic source model. Seeing is believing is an empirical principle which fails to recognize the fundamental stochasticity of earthquake occurrence. A fault rupture that happened in the past is just one of numerous ways in which seismic energy might have been dynamically released. There are important lessons to be learned for risk assessment by reimagining earthquake history. A number of salient examples from around the world are given of this counterfactual risk perspective.