VIDEO: UVic takes top Canadian spot at international seismic design competition

A University of Victoria team of engineering students was the only Canadian contingent to not see their model building collapse at an earthquake design challenge in California last month.

The UVIC Seismic Design team’s build withstood the “shake table” better than any other Canadian university at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Seismic Design Competition.

The San Francisco-based competition this year tasked 34 university teams from across the globe with designing and building twinned towers that had four sky bridges linking the two structures.

“The goal is to design a resilient tower that reduces building weight, maximizes rentable floor area, optimizes peak accelerations and displacements during earthquake shaking and utilizes innovative damping devices to dissipate seismic energy,” said Halla Kim, UVIC Seismic Design team’s co-president.

The five-foot balsa wood models were placed on a device that abruptly jolts the buildings back and forth to simulate earthquake activity. Cheers erupted from the 20 UVic undergraduate students as their structure withstood the test without falling apart.

UVic placed 10th overall and would’ve finished in the top five if it wasn’t for point deductions over a minor rule the team overlooked. Aside from earning first among Canadian universities, UVic was also awarded for making the best poster to accompany their design.

The Seismic Design competition looks to promote the study of earthquake engineering and Kim said it offers a chance for the students to gain hands-on, practical experience in the fields of geotechnical, structural and earthquake engineering, plus architecture.

“It was an extremely tough and competitive competition this year,” Kim said. “Almost 50 per cent of the teams’ towers collapsed due to the violent shaking in this year’s ground motions.”

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