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NZ Engineering Students Win International Earthquake Design Prizes
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
A team of postgraduate engineering students from the University of Auckland has returned victorious from an international earthquake design competition in Taiwan, where student teams competed to construct earthquake-resistant models of buildings.
(via University of Auckland) The University of Auckland postgraduate team finished second out of 21 universities, and won four individual awards for most creative structural design, most creative architectural design, most preferable award as voted by all teams and best presentation at the accompanying conference.
“The postgraduate team had to demonstrate an understanding of energy dissipation and seismic isolation by reinforcing a template two-storey model. The models then had to withstand a simulated earthquake on a shaking table,” says the team’s mentor, Senior Lecturer Quincy Ma. “This was the first time we have sent a postgraduate team as well as an undergraduate team, thanks to generous sponsorship from the Earthquake Commission and the Structural Engineering Society of New Zealand (SESOC). We are absolutely thrilled with the result for this first-time effort.”
The undergraduate team also recorded a respectable sixth placing of 42 teams.
The IDEERS Competition - Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools - was held at the Taiwan National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE).
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