The Earthquake Engineering Research institute (EERI) selected a paper co-authored by Dr. Hamed Ebrahimian as the Outstanding Earthquake Spectra Paper of 2016 (Vol. 32). The award announcement was made during the 11th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering (11NCEE) in Los Angeles (June 25-29, 2018). The paper, entitled “Landmark Data Set from the Building Nonstructural Components and Systems (BNCS) Project,” Earthquake Spectra, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 1239-1259, is co-authored by Dr. Ebrahimian and his fellow-collaborators from UC San Diego. The paper was selected on the basis of recommendations made by the Earthquake Spectra Editorial Board and the EERI Honors Committee.
The awarded paper is one of a sequence of three papers published in Earthquake Spectra detailing a landmark full-scale experimental program run at UC San Diego from 2010 to 2012. For this program, a full-scale five-story reinforced concrete building structure, fully furnished with non-structural components and systems, was built and tested at the UC San Diego large high-performance outdoor shake table. Dr. Ebrahimian contributed to this experimental program as part of his doctoral research. The Earthquake Spectra Editorial Board included the following statement in their recommendation.
Rarely do we see full scale testing, to the point of collapse, of structural systems including nonstructural elements. This paper sequence describes this undertaking from the design of the experiments through to the presentation and analysis of the data. The test sequence was essentially repeated twice, once with and again without seismic isolators. The authors present the data on structural response and performance, as well as the response of the non-structural components, which are linked to the structural responses. The authors describe this as a landmark data set, and I expect they are correct about this. The impact of the work is already evident from strong citations, which are among the top for this year in the journal.
The news is published in the June 1, 2018 Pulse newsletter and can be accessed from here.
Dr. Hamed Ebrahimian obtained his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from University of California, San Diego in 2013 and 2015 respectively. He served for about two years as a postdoctoral scholar and then as a research scientist at Caltech before joining SC Solutions as a Senior Engineer. Dr. Ebrahimian’s research is focused on integration of computational models with measurement data. His expertise includes linear and nonlinear methods for system identification, Bayesian model inversion, computational structural mechanics, and large-scale experiments. His research applications have spanned from structural and geotechnical engineering fields to seismology and geophysics. Dr. Ebrahimian has received several awards and scholarships throughout his career, and his research has been funded by several public and private agencies. At SC Solutions, he is currently working towards developing and implementing technology solutions for infrastructure monitoring and management.