The man who designed the CTV building that collapsed in the Christchurch earthquake has effectively scuttled any investigation into him by the Institution of Professional Engineers.
A photograph of a TVNZ camera operator filming the members of Crack'd for Christchurch during the launch of the Green Room garden. The members have gathered around their armchair and ottoman artwork. The armchair and ottoman are covered in white sheets and tied with a blue bow. They will be unveiled for the first time during the launch.Crack'd for Christchurch comments, "The whole team together."
A video of a dug-out soil pit on a farm near River Road in Lincoln. There is a thick layer of saturated sand between the topsoil and the subsoil where the grass roots end. The saturated soil is collapsing as a result of contractor Tony Fisher, of Fisher Agriculture Ltd, jumping lightly up and down on the edge of the pit.
A photograph of visitors to the 'Present Tense' project which was held in Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store. The project consisted of ten paintings which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of visitors to the 'Present Tense' project which was held in Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store. The project consisted of ten paintings which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of visitors to the 'Present Tense' project which was held in Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store. The project consisted of ten paintings which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of visitors to the 'Present Tense' project which was held in Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store. The project consisted of ten paintings which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of the former site of a house at 57 Bangor Street. The house was demolished after the land was zoned Red. The houses in the background have also been demolished, so that Oxford Terrace is visible in the distance.
The Christchurch Art Gallery is on track to reopen late next year, almost five years after the most devastating of the city's earthquakes put it out of commission. One of the key players in this important next step is Dr Lara Strongman who is the gallery's new senior curator.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artwork is on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of street art on the back wall of the AJ Creative Glass building on Fitzgerald Avenue. The photographer believes that the artwork was created by the artist 'Saves'.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
The aim of this report is to investigate the ductile performance of concrete tilt-up panels reinforced with cold-drawn mesh to improve the current seismic assessment procedure. The commercial impact of the project was also investigated. Engineering Advisory Group (EAG) guidelines state that a crack in a panel under face loading may be sufficient to fracture the mesh. The comments made by EAG regarding the performance of cold-drawn mesh may be interpreted as suggesting that assessment of such panels be conducted with a ductility of 1.0. Observations of tilt-up panel performance following the Christchurch earthquakes suggest that a ductility higher than μ=1.0 is likely to be appropriate for the response of panels to out-of-plane loading. An experimental test frame was designed to subject ten tilt-panel specimens to a cyclic quasi-static loading protocol. Rotation ductility, calculated from the force-displacement response from the test specimens, was found to range between 2.9 and 5.8. Correlation between tensile tests on 663L mesh, and data collected from instrumentation during testing confirmed that the mesh behaves as un-bonded over the pitch length of 150mm. Recommendation: Based on a moment-rotation assessment approach with an un-bonded length equal to the pitch of the mesh, a rotation ductility of μ=2.5 appears to be appropriate for the seismic assessment of panels reinforced with cold-drawn mesh.
This poster provides a summary of the development of a 3D shallow (z<40m) shear wave velocity (Vs) model for the urban Christchurch, New Zealand region. The model is based on a recently developed Christchurch-specific empirical correlation between Vs and cone penetration test (CPT) data (McGann et al. 2014a,b) and the large high-density database of CPT logs in the greater Christchurch urban area (> 15,000 logs as of 01/01/2014). In particular, the 3D model provides shear wave velocities for the surficial Springston Formation, Christchurch Formation, and Riccarton gravel layers which generally comprise the upper 40m in the Christchurch urban area. Point-estimates are provided on a 200m-by- 200m grid from which interpolation to other locations can be performed. This model has applications for future site characterization and numerical modeling efforts via maps of timeaveraged Vs over specific depths (e.g. Vs30, Vs10) and via the identification of typical Vs profiles for different regions and soil behaviour types within Christchurch. In addition, the Vs model can be used to constrain the near-surface velocities for the 3D seismic velocity model of the Canterbury basin (Lee et al. 2014) currently being developed for the purpose of broadband ground motion simulation.
Peter Marshall is managing director of architectural firm Warren and Mahoney, part of the team selected to carry out the task of the redesign of Christchurch after the earthquakes.
Generalized conditional intensity measure (GCIM) method is extended to ground motion selection for scenario ruptures. Using different rupture scenarios and site conditions, various aspects of the GCIM methodology are scrutinized, including: (i) implementation of different weight vectors and the composition of the IM vector; (ii) quantifying the importance of replicate selections for different number of desired ground motions; and (iii) the effect of considering bounds on the implicit causal parameters of the prospective ground motions. Using the extended methodology, representative ground motion ensembles for several major earthquake scenarios in New Zealand are developed. Cases considered include representative ground motions for the occurrence of Alpine, Hope, and Porters Pass earthquakes in Christchurch city, and the occurrence of Wellington, Wairarapa, and Ohariu fault ruptures in Wellington city. Challenges in the development of ground motion ensembles for subduction zone earthquakes are also highlighted. The selected scenario-based ground motion sets can be used to complement ground motions which are often selected in conjunction with probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, in order to understand the performance of structures for the question “what if this fault ruptures?”
Generalized conditional intensity measure (GCIM) method is extended to ground motion selection for scenario ruptures. Using different rupture scenarios and site conditions, various aspects of the GCIM methodology are scrutinized, including: (i) implementation of different weight vectors and the composition of the IM vector; (ii) quantifying the importance of replicate selections for different number of desired ground motions; and (iii) the effect of considering bounds on the implicit causal parameters of the prospective ground motions. Using the extended methodology, representative ground motion ensembles for several major earthquake scenarios in New Zealand are developed. Cases considered include representative ground motions for the occurrence of Alpine, Hope, and Porters Pass earthquakes in Christchurch city, and the occurrence of Wellington, Wairarapa, and Ohariu fault ruptures in Wellington city. Challenges in the development of ground motion ensembles for subduction zone earthquakes are also highlighted. The selected scenario-based ground motion sets can be used to complement ground motions which are often selected in conjunction with probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, in order to understand the performance of structures for the question “what if this fault ruptures?”
The UC CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive was built following the devastating earthquakes that hit the Canterbury region in the South Island of New Zealand from 2010 – 2012. 185 people were killed in the 6.3 magnitude earthquake of February 22nd 2011, thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, and the local community endured over 10,000 aftershocks. The program aims to document and protect the social, cultural, and intellectual legacy of the Canterbury community for the purposes of memorialization and enabling research. The nationally federated archive currently stores 75,000 items, ranging from audio and video interviews to images and official reports. Tens of thousands more items await ingestion. Significant lessons have been learned about data integration in post-disaster contexts, including but not limited to technical architecture, governance, ingestion process, and human ethics. The archive represents a model for future resilience-oriented data integration and preservation products.
A non-destructive hardness testing method has been developed to investigate the amount of plastic strain demand in steel elements subjected to cyclic loading. The focus of this research is on application to the active links of eccentrically braced frames (EBFs), which are a commonly used seismic-resisting system in modern steel framed buildings. The 2010/2011 Christchurch earthquake series, especially the very intense February 22 shaking, which was the first earthquake worldwide to push complete EBF systems fully into their inelastic state, generating a moderate to high level of plastic strain in EBF active links, for a range of buildings from 3 to 23 storeys in height. This raised two important questions: 1) what was the extent of plastic deformation in active links; and 2) what effect does that have to post-earthquake steel properties? This project comprised determining a robust relationship between hardness and plastic strain in order to be able to answer the first question and provide the necessary input into answering the second question. A non-destructive Leeb (portable) hardness tester (model TH170) has been used to measure the hardness, in order to determine the plastic strain, in hot rolled steel universal sections and steel plates. A bench top Rockwell B was used to compare and validated the hardness measured by the portable hardness tester. Hardness was measured from monotonically strained tensile test specimens to identify the relationship between hardness and plastic strain demand. Test results confirmed a good relationship between hardness and the amount of monotonically induced plastic strain. Surface roughness was identified as an important parameter in obtaining reliable hardness readings from a portable hardness reader. A proper surface preparation method was established by using three different cleaning methods, finished with hand sanding to achieve surface roughness coefficients sufficiently low not to distort the results. This work showed that a test surface roughness (Ra) is not more than 1.6 micron meter (μm) is required for accurate readings from the TH170 tester. A case study on an earthquake affected building was carried out to identify the relationship between hardness and amount of plastic strain demand in cyclically deformed active links. Hardness was carried out from active links shown visually to have been the most affected during one of the major earthquake events. Onsite hardness test results were then compared with laboratory hardness test results. A good relationship between hardness from onsite and laboratory was observed between the test methods; Rockwell B bench top and portable Leeb tester TH170. Manufacturing induced plastic strain in the top and bottom of the webs of hot rolled sections were discovered from this research, an important result which explains why visual effects of earthquake induced active link yielding (eg cracked or flaking paint) was typically more prevalent over the middle half depth of the active link. The extent of this was quantified. It was also evident that the hardness readings from the portable hardness tester are influenced by geometry, mass effects and rigidity of the links. The final experimental stage was application of the method to full scale cyclic inelastic tested nominally identical active links subjected to loading regimes comprising constant and variable plastic strain demands. The links were cyclically loaded to achieve different plastic strain level. A novel Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was incorporated during the tests of this scale, to confirm the level of plastic strain achieved. Tensile test specimens were water jet cut from cyclically deformed webs to analyse the level of plastic strain. Test results show clear evidence that cyclically deformed structural steel elements show good correlation between hardness and the amount of plastic strain demand. DIC method was found to be reliable and accurate to check the level of plastic strain within cyclically deformed structural steel elements.
A video of a dug-out soil pit on a farm near River Road in Lincoln. There is a thick layer of saturated sand between the topsoil and the subsoil where the grass roots end. The saturated soil is collapsing as a result of contractor Tony Fisher, of Fisher Agriculture Ltd, having jumped lightly up and down on the edge of the pit.
A video of contractor Tony Fisher, of Fisher Agricultural Ltd, jumping lightly up and down on the edge of a dug-out soil pit on a farm near River Road in Lincoln. There is a thick layer of saturated sand between the topsoil and the subsoil where the grass roots end. The saturated soil starts to collapse as a result of the movement.
A photograph of a visitor to Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store standing beside his favourite painting. The painting was part of the 'Present Tense' project which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of a visitor to Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store standing in front of her favourite painting. The painting was part of the 'Present Tense' project which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of visitors to Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store standing in front of their favourite painting. The painting was part of the 'Present Tense' project which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of visitors to Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store deciding which of ten paintings are their favourites. The paintings were part of the 'Present Tense' project which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.
A photograph of Rebecca Harris voting for her top five favourite paintings at Gap Filler's Inconvenience Store. The paintings were part of the 'Present Tense' project which sought to highlight the inconvenience of the city in the present day. Visitors to the store were asked to choose five paintings they would like to see presented as a billboard installation in Auckland.