The CEE Seismic Design Team is gearing up for a trip to Anchorage, Alaska in July for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s (EERI) Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition. Because Berkeley's design proposal was ranked among the top 10 submissions, EERi awarded them partial funding to attend the competition.
The Seismic Team's challenge is to design, analyze, and construct a 5-ft. tall, 29-story balsa wood structure that will be tested on a shake table with 3 different ground motions. The structure is optimized for a number of parameters, including weight, peak roof drift, and peak floor acceleration.
The team is well underway in their construction of 1 complete model building that they will put through a practice test at the end of March.They will assess the building's performance and based on these results, begin the construction of the actual competition-entry building.
The Seismic Team is full of new faces as every participating member in last year's competition graduated. Full of energy and excitement, this year's significantly larger team devotes many hours each week to construction, analysis, and testing of their entry.
May Berkeley's building stand proud! Go Bears!