Typically Encountered In-situ Material Properties
Principal Researcher: Associate
Professor Jason Ingham
Staff involved: Elizabeth Aitken-Rose, Garry Tonks
Students involved: Hamish
Gray, Alistair
Russell, Hannah
Schofield, Luke Clark, John O'Hagen, Aaron Wilson, Ronald Lumantarna.
New Zealand’s Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings have proven to perform poorly during earthquakes. Due to this poor performance, seismic retrofit of these buildings becomes necessary, as they not only represent a significant architectural heritage, but also occupy a large portion of the nation’s building stock. In order to achieve an accurate and cost effective retrofit design, it is important to accurately know the constituent material properties.
The current knowledge on New Zealand URM material properties is almost non-existent and the recommendations provided for conducting seismic assessment are based on limited experimental testing. Structural seismic designers have expressed the importance of obtaining better materials data in order to improve the accuracy, and therefore cost effectiveness of their computer modelling, field assessment and retrofit design.
This research’s aim is to achieve a robust database on material properties. These properties are to be obtained from both laboratory and on-site testing. It also involves consultation with seismic design engineers to gather information on the order of priority properties, therefore unnecessary material testing can be avoided. The material data from past projects has been gathered and the result has proven to be inconsistent due to the limited number of tests performed. It is believed that a better understanding on material properties will be obtained once the data gets richer. Once the database becomes robust and starts showing trends, the statistical distribution of each material property will be incorporated.
The objective of this aspect of the project is to gain an understanding of what material properties are typically encountered in seismically at-risk New Zealand buildings.
 |
 |
.