Earthquake and Post-Earthquake Fire Performance of Buildings

In April and May 2012, a series of landmark full-scale experiments were conducted on and within a 5-story reinforced concrete frame test specimen, which was erected on the nation’s largest outdoor shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center at the University of California, San Diego. Referred to as the building nonstructural components and systems (BNCS) project, the goal of this $5 Million academe-industry-government collaborative was to investigate earthquake performance of nonstructural building systems and post-earthquake fire performance.

The fire test program of this project was led by WPI Department of Fire Protection Engineering professor Brian Meacham, supported by three students, PhD candidate Haejun Park, MS candidate Jin Kyung Kim, and MS candidate A.J. Campanella. A report on the fire test program, data collection and preliminary observations is available for download here and a shorter Executive Summary of the fire test program here. As part of the overall research effort, UCSD-TV documented the construction and testing of the building, and produced a 29-minute video with a focus on building earthquake resilient hospitals for the future. The video overviews the building and presents images from the earthquake and fire tests. View the video here.