Earthquake Engineering – Demands, Damage, and Design

Presented by Derek E. Slovenec, Ph.D., E.I.T.

Earthquakes have challenged—and humbled—structural engineers throughout history. Their immense destructive potential to both life and property requires a risk-based design approach to achieve an acceptable level of public safety while remaining economically viable in terms of initial construction and anticipated repair costs. With modern seismic design codes and construction practices, these goals are perhaps today more readily attainable than ever before. However, advances in earthquake engineering have generally occurred in fits and starts following major seismic events; much of this advancement has come in recent decades, resulting in a population of existing structures which reflect their respective contemporaneous seismic design philosophies. These structures require analysis and possibly retrofit to aggregate a societally acceptable seismic risk.

This webinar will discuss the fundamentals of earthquake engineering, including modern analysis and design methodologies, damage assessment and repair, and retrofit of existing sub-standard seismic force resisting systems. These best practices are focused on mitigating risk for buildings and other structures subject to seismic events.