Portland Cement Association (PCA), in partnership with the School of Engineering at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Consortium, Inc. (NEESinc) announce a blind prediction contest to measure building responses to tests done at the new NEES Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table. The building slice was subjected to increasing intensity of uniaxial earthquake ground motions from October 2005 until January 2006. Responses were measured using an extensive instrumentation array. Researchers designed the building slice using a displacement-based and capacity approach with design lateral forces significantly smaller than those currently required by U.S. building codes.
The NEES Outdoor Shake Table at UCSD’s Engelkirk Structural Engineering Center is the first outdoor shake table in the world and the largest outside of Japan. Its size enabled testers to recreate the seismic motion that occurred at the Sylmar Medical Facility in Sylmar, Calif. during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the first earthquake to strike directly under an urban area of the United States since the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
The competition is open to the practicing structural engineering community, the academic and research community (including graduate students), and the undergraduate engineering student community (with graduate student or faculty advisors).
The prediction contest will be “blind” and compare analytical response predictions with those measured during experimental testing. All entries will be compiled and compared at a technical session of the NEES Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., June 21-23, 2006. The technical session will focus on relevant lessons learned regarding modeling uncertainty, practical needs for improved simulation capabilities or training, and the merits of large-scale testing.
Winning teams in all three categories (practicing, research, and undergraduate students) will receive a $2500 prize from PCA. NEESinc will also reimburse a representative from each of the winning teams for travel expenses to attend the NEES Annual Meeting.
All predictions are due May 15, 2006.
For complete contest rules, and structure and ground motion details visit the Web site.
