Cal Poly's EERI Seismic Design Competition Team travels to LA for the 15th Annual Undergraduate Competition

This year, the Annual Seismic Design Competition (SDC) coincided with the 11^th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering.  This provided students the unique opportunity of not only competing against teams from all over the globe, but getting the opportunity to listen to numerous industry professionals.  15 students accompanied by EERI SDC’s faculty advisor, Anahid Behrouzi, rendezvoused at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles for the week-long conference.

Teams representing Universities from United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Malaysia, China, and Romania came together for the competition. The competition judges the team’s technical communication through a written proposal, poster, and oral presentation.  They are also judged on their analysis of their structure based on the accuracy of their computer simulation predictions with the measured results from the shake table test in which each team’s 5-foot tall balsa-wood model is subjected to two earthquake ground motions.  ARCE students Jeret Buerger, Brooke Lipsey, and Jerry Luong gave the oral presentation, receiving 2nd place and amazing feedback from the audience and judges. 

During the week, our ARCE students participated in other events hosted by EERI including the Post-Earthquake Reconnaissance Workshop and structural engineering walking tours around downtown Los Angeles. Additionally, the Cal Poly group visited the structural engineering firm Walter P. Moore located in LA.  There they got to talk to the office about their work, including the new LA Rams Stadium, and how to best prepare for working in the industry.

Outside of the competition, Behrouzi also gave presentations on her recent research on creating an automated system to gather post-earthquake damage and conduct reconnaissance work at the conference.  A colleague of Behrouzi, Andrew Mock, gave a presentation on an article both of them collaborated on about reinforced concrete shear walls. 

The current Cal Poly EERI team is already underway preparing for the 2018-2019 competition, as they are looking forward to next year’s SDC in Vancouver, Canada.

 

members of the calpoly eeri sdc team competing in la

Students in attendance: Jeret Buerger, Jerry Luong, Kyle Chase, Brooke Lipsey, Olivia Pepe-Phelps, Jenna Williams, Tanya Wohlfarth, Max Snook, Ricardo Gustavson, Mark Wright, Julia De Hart, Maja Sagaser, Nick Coburn, Allie Decker, Katie Terou.