July 10-14, 2017

This collaborative research workshop is held through the MIT-BÜ MISTI international program for research, education and outreach. The objective of the workshop is to further develop energy-based design (EBD) concepts through comprehensive experimental studies using novel data acquisition and data processing techniques, as a basis to provide design recommendations for new structures with better earthquake hazards resistance. Successful development and implementation of this approach will provide novel, non-invasive and cost effective solution for researchers and practicing engineers. This work is a result of long-term collaboration among MIT, BÜ and İTÜ in the general area of earthquake engineering, which has involved development of initial concepts and jointly supervised several Ph.D. theses from BÜ and İTÜ.Force and displacement-based structural analysis methods are common approaches used in current engineering practice. These methods range from static equivalent earthquake loading to frequency spectra and displacement-based methods coupled with performance-based analyses. However, duration and frequency content of the earthquakes are not considered in these methods. The Energy-Based analysis method involves integration of the equation of motion with structure’s displacement response throughout the duration of the earthquake motion in order to obtain the earthquake energy imposed to the structure. The imposed energy has elastic, plastic, damping and kinetic energy components. Thus, the basis of structural design and determination of its damage level are a function of how much the structure’s capacity to dissipate the imposed energy.Accurate computation of energy terms and seismic energy demand distributions is an essential task for energy-based design. Such computation requires reliable measurements of structural response and robust methods for estimating the energy related properties of a system. Therefore, throughout this collaborative workshop, the technologies that have been developed by MIT team will be implemented and knowledge will be transferred. This involves recent developments in wireless sensor networks, novel structural identification techniques, sophisticated signal processing methodologies, and advanced computer vision algorithms. In particular, throughout the comprehensive shake-table experiments at STEELab in Istanbul Technical University, phase-based video motion processing (Motion Magnification) will be used to extract the sub-pixel displacements and to magnify the structural deformations to infer both plastic hinging and damaged locations.The workshop will start with presentations at BÜ and İTÜ from participating researchers and will continue with testing, data processing, and evaluation of the results with a summary as a basis for further research and interaction.

Prof. Dr. Oral Büyüköztürk, MIT
Associate Prof. Dr. Cem Yalçın, BÜ
Associate Prof. Dr. Ercan Yüksel, İTÜ