Engineering teams snare top prizes in APEC-IDEERS Earthquake Challenge 2009

Members of the NUS teams. Top row, from left: Mentor Dr Pang Sze Dai, Harrif Santo, Li Peifeng, Siah Sin Cheng, Fong Jiun Shen Melvin and James Wijaya. Bottom row, from left: Kwa Chin Soon, Cai Dingyan and Liu Lihui.

NUS TEAMS met with stiff competition in this year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation -Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering in Schools (APEC - IDEERS) competition (24-28 Sept). But the two teams under the mentorship of Dr Pang Sze Dai rose to the occasion -- and triumphed.

The Civl Engineering team led by Mr Harrif Santo, comprising Mr Kwa Chin Soon, Mr James Wijaya and Ms Liu Lihui took the the first prize -- $20,000 cash (Taiwan Dollars) as well as certificates and trophy. The Engineering Science Programme team led by Mr Siah Sin Cheng, comprising Mr Li Peifeng, Mr Fong Jiun Shen Melvin and Mr Cai Dingyan came in third. They received $10,000 (Taiwan Dollars), trophy and certificates.

A total of 101 teams participated with 42 teams in the undergraduate category. The teams represented over 37 universities including the University of Auckland, Bristol University, Hongkong University of Science and Technology, National Taiwan University, University of Philippines, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Yonsei University.

The competition aims to promote earthquake engineering and seismic protection education. Originally developed by the University of Bristol as a national competition for secondary school students in the UK, it has since become the world’s largest international seismic resistant structural design competition because of the considerable interest from high schools and universities worldwide. From 2001 onwards, this international competition has been hosted and organised annually by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) in Taiwan with National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR), the Asia-Pacific Network of Centers for Earthquake Engineering Research (ANCER), the British Council and the University of Bristol.

The competition is traditionally held in the last week of September to commemorate the 921 Chi-Chi Taiwan Earthquake of 1999. The event commenced with a one-day educational field trip to areas affected by the 921 Chi-Chi Taiwan Earthquake which include the Shih Gang Dam, the 921 Earthquake Museum and Taipei 101. Taipei 101 is one of tallest earthquake resistant structure in the world with a huge tuned mass damper at the top storey. On the 3rd day of the event, students were given wood, paper, glue, string and rubber bands to construct an efficient multi-storey model structure within 6.5 hours. On the last day of the competition, the models were subjected to artificial earthquakes with increasing intensities ranging from 0.25g to 1.10g simulated on the NCREE shake-table. The models were judged on an efficiency index defined by the product of the earthquake intensity and the total load applied on the model, divided by the self weight of the model.

Putting into practice the theories they have learnt in structural mechanics and dynamics, and the experiential learning from model testing, both NUS teams built models that incorporate key features of seismic resistant structures, such as damper brace system, strong column-weak beam strength hierarchy and joints with high rotational capacities.

The NUS teams have clearly demonstrated an in-depth understanding and appreciation of the principles behind seismic resistant structures in order to design and built the winning models with exceptionally high efficiency indices of 66.85 and 60.933 respectively, as compared to an average of 35.95 for teams in the undergraduate category.

Models submitted by NUS undergraduate teams and mini-posters describing their design philosophy. NUS CE team (C-35), NUS ESP team (C-38).