Sept. 27, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ray Ladd
College of Architecture and Environmental Design
805-756-7432
rladd@calpoly.edu
Cal Poly Architectural Engineering Students Win International Contest for Blind Prediction
SAN LUIS OBISPO – Three Cal Poly Architectural Engineering students won $2,500 in the undergraduate division of the Seven Story Reinforced Concrete Building Slice Blind Prediction Contest which was held on-line last spring. The international award was presented at the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Michael Billings, Soyoon Lee and Evan Peterman won the contest which was funded by the National Science Foundation. The students’ advisor was Architectural Engineering Associate Professor Ansgar Neuenhofer.
The contest challenged students from eight countries to try to analytically predict the real seismic behavior of a seven-story reinforced concrete shear wall during a specific earthquake. Calculations were made for four levels of earthquakes and included predictions about displacements, drifts, shears, moments, and accelerations throughout the wall structure. The team’s prediction was the closest to the actual measured behavior of the full-scale seven-story concrete wall during a shake table test. Experiments like these help prepare students to tackle complex structural problems in the future.
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