Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "617-621 Colombo Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "55 Chester Street West".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Strategy House, now leaning and in danger of collapse after another aftershock".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Lane between 117-119 Lichfield Street".
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing an assessment of the Kenton Chambers Building on Hereford Street.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing an assessment of the Kenton Chambers Building on Hereford Street.
Structural Engineers from the New Zealand and Los Angeles County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue teams performing assessments of buildings on High Street near Manchester Street.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "195 - 199 Armagh Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "195 Armagh Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "195 Armagh Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "141-149 Manchester Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Badly damaged building - 267 Manchester Street".
A photograph of concerned members of the public looking up at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, shortly after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Many of the people in the crowd are structural engineers from all over the world who travelled to Christhcurch for an earthquake workshop. The workshop was just about to begin when the 22 February 2011 earthquake hit.
A photograph of concerned members of the public looking up at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, shortly after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Many of the people in the crowd are structural engineers from all over the world who travelled to Christhcurch for an earthquake workshop. The workshop was just about to begin when the 22 February 2011 earthquake hit.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "636-644 Colombo Street".
Currently there is a worldwide renaissance in timber building design. At the University of Canterbury, new structural systems for commercial multistorey timber buildings have been under development since 2005. These systems incorporate large timber sections connected by high strength post-tensioning tendons, and timber-concrete composite floor systems, and aim to compete with existing structural systems in terms of cost, constructability, operational and seismic performance. The development of post-tensioned timber systems has created a need for improved lateral force design approaches for timber buildings. Current code provisions for seismic design are based on the strength of the structure, and do not adequately account for its deformation. Because timber buildings are often governed by deflection, rather than strength, this can lead to the exceedence of design displacement limitations imposed by New Zealand codes. Therefore, accurate modeling approaches which define both the strength and deformation of post-tensioned timber buildings are required. Furthermore, experimental testing is required to verify the accuracy of these models. This thesis focuses on the development and experimental verification of modeling approaches for the lateral force design of post-tensioned timber frame and wall buildings. The experimentation consisted of uni-direcitonal and bi-directional quasi-static earthquake simulation on a two-thirds scale, two-storey post-tensioned timber frame and wall building with timber-concrete composite floors. The building was subjected to lateral drifts of up to 3% and demonstrated excellent seismic performance, exhibiting little damage. The building was instrumented and analyzed, providing data for the calibration of analytical and numerical models. Analytical and numerical models were developed for frame, wall and floor systems that account for significant deformation components. The models predicted the strength of the structural systems for a given design performance level. The static responses predicted by the models were compared with both experimental data and finite element models to evaluate their accuracy. The frame, wall and floor models were then incorporated into an existing lateral force design procedure known as displacement-based design and used to design several frame and wall structural systems. Predictions of key engineering demand parameters, such as displacement, drift, interstorey shear, interstorey moment and floor accelerations, were compared with the results of dynamic time-history analysis. It was concluded that the numerical and analytical models, presented in this thesis, are a sound basis for determining the lateral response of post-tensioned timber buildings. However, future research is required to further verify and improve these prediction models.
A house on Avonside Drive that has moved off its foundations.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Remains of 51-53 Cathedral Square".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "198 Hereford Street".
Cordon fencing around the damaged Woolston Community Library. A section of the brick wall on the side has crumbled.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "84 Lichfield Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "267 Manchester Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "219 High Street".
A damaged brick house on Avonside Drive.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "154 Armagh Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "641-643 Colombo Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "South-east corner of Colombo and Tuam Streets".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "North-east corner of Colombo and Tuam Streets".
Structural engineers taking a break on the roof of the Warners Hotel, Cathedral Square.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Hotel Grand Chancellor. Structural damage on the ground floor".