March 1, 2002, 4:00 pm EST,
Hesburgh Center Auditorium

"A Comparison of the Response of Precast Construction during the 1994 Northridge and 1999 Turkey Earthquakes"

Professor

Department of Civil Engineering

Precast construction is used around the world to construct economical concrete structures with long spans. In Southern California, the most common application for precast construction is parking structures and a number of modern precast parking structures collapsed or sustained significant structural damage in the epicentral region of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The most common application for precast construction in Turkey is low-rise industrial buildings and warehouses. Many of these structures collapsed during the İzmit and Düzce earthquakes in 1999.

The lateral-load resisting systems used in precast buildings were very different in Southern California and Western Turkey. The parking structures were designed using a small number of cast-in-place walls that were intended to transmit the loads induced by the earthquake into the foundation and the precast elements were designed to carry gravity loads only. In contrast, the precast columns in Turkish warehouses were designed to carry all the lateral loads as cantilevered columns.

The vulnerabilities inherent to each structural system will be discussed and recommendations will be suggested for improving the seismic performance of precast construction in the future.

(Presentation Poster, 280 KB) Wood, Sharon, "A Comparison of the Response of Precast Construction during the 1994 Northridge and 1999 Turkey Earthquakes".

(Paper, 382 KB) Posada, M. and Wood, S., "Seismic Performance of Precast Industrial Buildings in Turkey," to be published in Proceedings of the 7th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, July 21-25, 2002, Boston, MA, made available with permission from EERI.

Wood's research interests are related to studying the behavior of reinforced concrete structures.  She has studied the seismic response of buildings in Viña del Mar following the 1985 Chile earthquake, evaluated the performance of precast parking garages during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and is currently studying the performance of precast construction in Turkey following the 1999 earthquakes.  Wood has conducted static and dynamic tests of reinforced concrete frame and wall structural systems in the laboratory, and developed nonlinear analytical models to interpret the response.  Recently, she has conducted diagnostic load tests on existing reinforced concrete slab, pan girder, and prestressed girder bridges in Texas and investigated techniques for strengthening these structures using composite materials.  Current projects include fatigue tests to evaluate damage in stay cables due to excessive wind-rain-induced vibrations, and developing a passive, wireless sensor for detecting cracks in welded structural steel connections.

Wood is a fellow of the American Concrete Institute.  She is a member of its Technical Activities Committee and its Structural Concrete Building Code Committee.  She also serves as chair of the ACI Publications Committee.  Wood is also a member of the Editorial Board for Earthquake Spectra.  In 1993 she received the Alfred Noble Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers for her paper “Seismic Response of R/C Frames with Setbacks.”  She will receive the Joe W. Kelly Award from the American Concrete Institute in April for her dedication to improving the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete structures.