International Travel Support during 2016-17 for U.S.-Japan Research Collaboration on the Seismic Design and Testing of Mid-Rise Reinforced Concrete Buildings

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This award will support a group of U.S. researchers to travel to Japan during 2016 and 2017 to continue a research collaboration with Japanese colleagues to develop and conduct a seismic testing program for two full-scale, ten-story reinforced concrete building models on the three-dimensional, full-scale earthquake testing shake table facility (E-Defense) operated by Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience. The first building model was tested during November and December 2015, and the second building model is planned to be tested during May 2017. By working with Japanese colleagues, the U.S. researchers will contribute to the design, instrumentation, and testing protocols of the building structures, and will gain access to the test data for use in subsequent research analyses. Subsequent studies using the data generated in these tests can help advance simulation methods for improving the seismic resilience of buildings and communities in the United States. The U.S. participants will be selected based on their expertise, as well as to promote participation from underrepresented groups. This award is part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Under NSF award CMMI-1547833, U.S. researchers participated in the seismic testing of the first ten-story building model on the E-Defense shake table during November and December 2015. The first building model had moment-resisting frames in one direction and shear walls in the orthogonal direction. The base of the structure was constructed first to study the effects of simple sliding devices on building response and then locked to create a fixed-based condition to enable testing to severe damage. The focus of this award is on the seismic design and testing of the second ten-story building model, which will be conceptually similar to the first structure, but with different design details. The second structure will be designed to have many features in common with U.S. reinforced concrete buildings, including moment frames and rectangular shear walls designed to withstand effects associated with the inelastic response of buildings subjected to strong earthquakes that drive the buildings to near collapse. For these second tests, the U.S. participants will aim to gather data that can serve as the basis for future research within the U.S., including research on computational models to simulate the response of buildings to strong earthquake shaking.