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Lasers speed up seismic damage assessments2 min read

by Christina Procopiou on August 13, 2019

Energy Geosciences Division

 

The following article about work being done by Berkeley Lab researchers that could potentially expedite seismic-damage assessments appeared first on Temblor®.

 

By Alka Tripathy-Lang, Ph.D. (@DrAlkaTrip)

The Mw 7.1 earthquake on July 5, 2019, was the largest quake California has seen in 20 years. Part of the so-called Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, the Mw 7.1 event served as a reminder of the seismic hazard associated with living on the West Coast of the United States. Although these tremors struck a relatively sparsely populated region, significant damage was sustained, with the estimated economic impact in excess of $100 million. Determining the extent of damage to individual buildings is an arduous and time-consuming task. Now, engineers are testing a state-of-the-art laser-based system that could dramatically speed up post-earthquake damage assessments by accurately measuring displacement between floors of multistory buildings.

Is the building safe?

In the chaos immediately following a large, damaging earthquake, structural engineers have a massive workload in assessing the safety of affected buildings, especially critical infrastructure like hospitals and water treatment plants, and large buildings like multistory apartment or office buildings. “The post-event environment is overwhelming and confusing, and people need to know right away if they can go back to work or go home,” says Floriana Petrone, an assistant professor of structural engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), visiting faculty scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and lead author of a paper published in Engineering Structures that presents results from tests of the new laser-based system.

Structural engineers typically spend a day or two evaluating buildings that are under contract, says Ronald Hamburger, a senior principal at Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, a company that designs, investigates and rehabilitates buildings and structures. Then the engineers respond to calls from other building owners wanting to determine if their buildings are safe for reentry immediately or if they need repairs first, in which case, the engineers develop repair plans. In a few cases, Hamburger says, the damage is obvious. But many buildings conceal their wounds within the walls, he says. This is particularly problematic for certain steel-framed buildings, where the only method to assess damage extent is to manually remove asbestos-based fireproofing. This potentially dangerous damage assessment process can take days to weeks.

Petrone and her UNR/LBNL colleague David McCallen, who first envisioned the technology, think their system could dramatically speed up post-event evaluation of building safety — allowing such evaluations to be completed in minutes instead of days.

Read the complete article here.

News & Events

EGD Postdoc Fellow Receives Young Researcher Presenter Award1 min read

January 21, 2021

Pramod Bhuvankar, an EGD postdoctoral fellow working with research scientist Abdullah Cihan, received a Young Researcher Presenter Award during the 2020 Computational Methods in Water Resources conference in December. His presentation, “Pore-scale simulations of permeability decline in porous media due to fines migration,” described a pore-scale CFD study of clay mobilization in porous media due…

Berkeley Lab Partners with International Collaborators in Geothermal Energy Research1 min read

January 20, 2021

  Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division have begun working with European partners on three new geothermal research projects through the Department of Energy’s membership in GEOTHERMICA, a transnational consortium that combines the in-country financial resources and research expertise of 15 participating countries to demonstrate and validate novel concepts in geothermal energy use. This marks the…

EESA Senior Scientist Talks Earthquake Building Resilience1 min read

Berkeley Lab senior scientist David McCallen leads a subproject called Earthquake Sim, or EQSIM, for the DOE’s Energy Exascale Computing Project. He is also professor and director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. McCallen recently spoke with Scott Gibson of…

EESA Scientist Coauthors New Comprehensive Guide on Removing CO2 from the Atmosphere2 min read

January 18, 2021

Berkeley Lab researchers are working on ways to sequester more carbon in soil, including through agricultural practices. (Credit: Berkeley Lab) Scientists say that any serious plan to address climate change should include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and policies, which makes the newly launched CDR Primer an especially vital resource, says Berkeley Lab scientist Margaret Torn, one…

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