Svetlana Brzev and Porkeang Lim
Svetlana Brzev and fourth year Civil Engineering student Porkeang Lim had lots of fun this summer working on a collaborative UBC and BCIT collaborative research project. The topic of the project is seismic stability of reinforced masonry (RM) shear walls, and it is sponsored by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the masonry industry – Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers Association (CCMPA) and the Masonry Institute of BC (MIBC). The goal is to establish safe slenderness limits for RM shear walls and avoid out-of-plane buckling of these walls due to in-plane seismic loading. Five 3.8 m high masonry columns subjected to reversed cyclic loading are currently being tested at UBC to study the behaviour of end-regions of RM shear walls, which are most susceptible to buckling. The research associated with this project is the scope of Masters’ thesis for a 2009 B.Eng. (Civil) grad Nazli Azimikor. Nazli will be remembered as the first BCIT Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering grad to have pursued graduate studies.
