Engineering on Display: At the New Engineering Industrial Building, Universtiy of Alaska, Anchorage

Abstract eng:
Anchorage is the largest population center in the State of Alaska and located in the highly active North Pacific seismic zone and overlies a deep sedimentary basin. The area witnessed several widespread destruction including liquefaction and clay failure during the Great 1964 Prince William Sound Earthquake (Mw=9.2). The University of Alaska - Anchorage (UAA) campus in the midtown area of Anchorage, Alaska is located on a seismic site class C (360＜β30≤760 m/s) and having a prominent Site Response (SR) of 2.0 at short period (0.2 sec) compared to the rock site located on the foothills of Chugach Mountains in the eastern part of the basin. Besides the University buildings, the campus and its adjoining area house several medical facilities which are highly occupied during normal working days. With the sustained growth of the area as observed during last several decades, the seismic hazard has become one of the more important issues. To understand the structural response of a typical building (3 to 4 stories) in the campus area, the newly constructed 81,000 square-foot four-story College of Engineering building, commonly known as Engineering Industrial Building (EIB) at the University of Alaska - Anchorage (UAA) has been instrumented with state-of–the-art structural monitoring system that includes accelerometers, strain gauges and wind sensors to provide a real-time display of the building health and enable rapid post-event assessment. Moreover, the unique instrumentation layout and displays essentially turn the building itself into a living research laboratory. This effort, along with many other monitoring systems installed in the building (e.g., energy and water usage) has been coined “Engineering on Display.” Datasets from seismic events and every-day operation will be integrated into student coursework, helping to bridge the gap between traditional engineering education and the use of modern technology.

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