
The Royal Commission into the Canterbury earthquakes has been told illegal building techniques are being used in the Christchurch rebuild because the engineering profession is in crisis.
A structural engineer has broken down at the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission after admitting he contributed to a woman's death in the February the twenty second earthquake.
Auckland structural engineer John Scarry is concerned that the series of investigations into earthquake related collapses of Christchurch buildings won't result in the changes needed to make the city safer.
Structural engineers inspecting the Warners Novotel, Cathedral Square.
A video of an interview with Anne Mackenzie, structural engineer at Build Green Ltd, about her work to retrieve items from The Suit Doctor and Smith's Bookshop on Manchester Street.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams outside the Kenton Chambers Building on Hereford Street.
An overseas expert has defended the structural engineer who declared the Canterbury Television building sound after the September 2010 earthquake.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing an assessment of the Kenton Chambers Building on Hereford Street.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing an assessment of the Kenton Chambers Building on Hereford Street.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing assessments of buildings on High Street near Manchester Street.
A structural engineer has told the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission that illegal building techniques are being used in the Christchurch rebuild because the engineering profession is in crisis.
Structural engineers taking a break on the roof of the Warners Hotel, Cathedral Square.
The president of the Structural Engineers' Society, John Hare, says since the Christchurch earthquakes, engineers have been too conservative in evaulations for fear of liability.
A photograph of concerned members of the public looking up at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, shortly after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Many of the people in the crowd are structural engineers from all over the world who travelled to Christhcurch for an earthquake workshop. The workshop was just about to begin when the 22 February 2011 earthquake hit.
A photograph of concerned members of the public looking up at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, shortly after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Many of the people in the crowd are structural engineers from all over the world who travelled to Christhcurch for an earthquake workshop. The workshop was just about to begin when the 22 February 2011 earthquake hit.
A structural engineer has denied he rushed the inspection of earthquake repairs to a Christchurch bar so it could re-open in time for New Years Eve.
A structural engineer who ordered a building green stickered though he'd failed to do another thorough check on it has defended his inspections at the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission.
A video about a fire which broke out in an earthquake-damaged building on High Street. The video includes an interview with Steve Kennedy, Canterbury Fire Service Assistant Area Manager, Brigid Fayle, who worked in the building prior to the 22 February 2011 earthquake, and Anne MacKenzie, a structural engineer who worked on strengthening the building.
A photograph of Luis Castillo, structural engineer for Aurecon, giving a speech at the Pallet Pavilion as part of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of Luis Castillo, structural engineer for Aurecon, giving a speech at the Pallet Pavilion as part of FESTA 2013.
With Adrian Regnault, the General Manager of Building Systems Performance at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; Stefano Pampanin, an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering at Canterbury University and the President of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering and John Finnegan - structural engineer, Aurecon.
A photograph of structural engineers taking a lunch break outside the temporary Civil Defence headquarters at the Christchurch Art Gallery on Montreal Street.
Building plans signed off by the Christchurch City Council show one of its own structural engineers was involved in the design of a new multistorey building that is unstable. The eight-storey office building at 230 High Street is off-limits as it is too weak and might 'rupture' in an earthquake. But the council insists the planning documents are wrong and its engineer had only a minor role. Phil Pennington reports.
Following the devastating 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake, buildings in Napier and surrounding areas in the Hawke's Bay region were rebuilt in a comparatively homogenous structural and architectural style comprising the region's famous Art Deco stock. These interwar buildings are most often composed of reinforced concrete two-way space frames, and although they have comparatively ductile detailing for their date of construction, are often expected to be brittle, earthquake-prone buildings in preliminary seismic assessments. Furthermore, the likelihood of global collapse of an RC building during a design-level earthquake became an issue warranting particular attention following the collapse of multiple RC buildings in the February 22, 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Those who value the architectural heritage and future use of these iconic Art Deco buildings - including building owners, tenants, and city officials, among others - must consider how they can be best preserved and utilized functionally given the especially pressing implications of relevant safety, regulatory, and economic factors. This study was intended to provide information on the seismic hazard, geometric weaknesses, collapse hazards, material properties, structural detailing, empirically based vulnerability, and recommended analysis approaches particular to Art Deco buildings in Hawke's Bay as a resource for professional structural engineers tasked with seismic assessments and retrofit designs for these buildings. The observed satisfactory performance of similar low-rise, ostensibly brittle RC buildings in other earthquakes and the examination of the structural redundancy and expected column drift capacities in these buildings, led to the conclusion that the seismic capacity of these buildings is generally underrated in simple, force-based assessments.
The Royal Commission investigating the Canterbury earthquakes has heard that the premises where a man was killed by a falling concrete wall was not inspected by structural engineers between the September and February quakes.
The Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission has heard that a breakdown in communication between structural engineers, a property manager and owner led the tenants of a building to wrongly assume their shop was safe.
A video about the Christchurch City Council housing complex on Conference Street in the Christchurch central city. The housing complex was unoccupied after the 22 February 2011 earthquake despite the housing shortage. Christchurch City Council said that the vacant units could not be lived in because of structural damage or damage to services. However, the building has been checked by structural engineers and many of the rooms have been deemed safe to occupy.
Quick and reliable assessment of the condition of bridges in a transportation network after an earthquake can greatly assist immediate post-disaster response and long-term recovery. However, experience shows that available resources, such as qualified inspectors and engineers, will typically be stretched for such tasks. Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems can therefore make a real difference in this context. SHM, however, needs to be deployed in a strategic manner and integrated into the overall disaster response plans and actions to maximize its benefits. This study presents, in its first part, a framework of how this can be achieved. Since it will not be feasible, or indeed necessary, to use SHM on every bridge, it is necessary to prioritize bridges within individual networks for SHM deployment. A methodology for such prioritization based on structural and geotechnical seismic risks affecting bridges and their importance within a network is proposed in the second part. An example using the methodology application to selected bridges in the medium-sized transportation network of Wellington, New Zealand is provided. The third part of the paper is concerned with using monitoring data for quick assessment of bridge condition and damage after an earthquake. Depending on the bridge risk profile, it is envisaged that data will be obtained from either local or national seismic monitoring arrays or SHM systems installed on bridges. A method using artificial neural networks is proposed for using data from a seismic array to infer key ground motion parameters at an arbitrary bridges site. The methodology is applied to seismic data collected in Christchurch, New Zealand. Finally, how such ground motion parameters can be used in bridge damage and condition assessment is outlined. AM - Accepted manuscript
A photograph of a sign taped to one of the buildings in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury. The sign indicates that the building has been inspected by a structural engineer and is safe to enter.
One of the failure modes that got the attention of researchers in the 2011 February New Zealand earthquake was the collapse of a key supporting structural wall of Grand Chancellor Hotel in Christchurch which failed in a brittle manner. However, until now this failure mode has been still a bit of a mystery for the researchers in the field of structural engineering. Moreover, there is no method to identify, assess and design the walls prone to such failure mode. Following the recent break through regarding the mechanism of this failure mode based on experimental observations (out-of-plane shear failure), a numerical model that can capture this failure was developed using the FE software DIANA. A comprehensive numerical parametric study was conducted to identify the key parameters contributing to the development of out-of-plane shear failure in reinforced concrete (RC) walls. Based on the earthquake observations, experimental and numerical studies conducted by the authors of this paper, an analytical method to identify walls prone to out-of-plane shear failure that can be used in practice by engineers is proposed. The method is developed based on the key parameters affecting the seismic performance of RC walls prone to out-of-plane shear failure and can be used for both design and assessment purposes