doi:10.3850/978-981-07-7136-2_300
Needs of Physical Evidences for Advancement of Steel Research
Professor Masayoshi Nakashima
Disaster Prevention Research Institute
Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, JAPAN
Email: nakashima@archi.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Biography
Masayoshi Nakashima is Professor at Kyoto University, Japan, and has been engaged in research and education in structural and earthquake engineering research. After graduating from Kyoto University, he went to the United States and earned his Ph.D. degree from Lehigh University, PA. When he returned to Japan, he worked at the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Ministry of Construction and then at Kobe University, before moving to the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) of Kyoto University. DPRI, founded in 1951, is a unique research organization featured with over one-hundred faculty members whose expertise extends from natural science, engineering, informatics, to social sciences. Since 2011, he serves as Director of DPRI and leads the research and education implemented in DPRI.
Nakashima’s fields of research include inelastic, stability, and collapse behavior of steel members and frames, seismic analysis and design of steel building structures, and experimental techniques for the simulation of earthquake responses. In particular, he pioneered the realization of two very important experimental techniques in earthquake engineering: the hybrid simulation and the shaking table test. Between 2004 and 2011, Nakashima served as Inaugurating Director of E-Defense, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). E-Defense is a research center that operates the world’s largest shaking table (http://www.bosai.go.jp/hyogo/ehyogo/index.html).
Extending a 30-year time span, Nakashima and his students have published some three hundred technical papers, over one hundred and fifty of them in archived journals. He supervised over 70 graduate students including 26 doctoral students. Based on the research carried out by him and his students, Nakashima has earned various national awards including the Best Paper Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) and the Best Paper Award of the Japan Society of Steel Construction (JSSC), among others. He also earned three awards in the United States: the Moisseiff Award and the Ernest E. Howard Award, both from American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the Special Achievement Award from American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). Japanese academia recognizes Nakashima’s academic achievements, and elected him Member of the Engineering Academy of Japan (EAJ, equivalent to the National Academy of Engineering of the United States) and also Fellow of the Japan Federation of Engineering Societies (JFES).
Regarding his contribution to the concerned profession, he served as Vice-President of AIJ, Vice-President of the Japanese Society for Earthquake Engineering (JAEE), and Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) of the United States. Currently, he is Executive Vice President of International Association of Earthquake Engineering (IAEE). He also serves as Editor of International Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics (EESD), an official journal of IAEE.
Abstract
The 2011 March 11th Tohoku Earthquake caused the most serious damage to the land and society of Japan in the modern history of Japan. The earthquake brought about a variety of damage, both physical and social, including extremely large rupture, over 400 km, a huge tsunami that caused complete devastation of many towns and villages, performance of hundreds of high-rises and base-isolated buildings in the Tokyo metropolitan, widespread disruption in the Tokyo metropolitan area that was caused due primarily to the shortage of electric power, and technical and social response to nuclear accidents, among others. Earthquake engineering faces many challenges of research to comply with those observations and build the environment that is safer andmore secure. Among those, the following two themes, namely, (1) Response to earthquakes beyond what is considered in structural design and (2) Continuing business and prompt recovery, are considered to be most urgent for research. To carry out research to this end, those themes must be translated into specific engineering research subjects, and they are identified as: (A) Quantification of collapse margin of buildings and (B) Monitoring and prompt condition assessment of buildings. To comply with these specific research needs, a new, comprehensive research project, entitled “Maintenance and Recovery of Functionality in Urban Infrastructures”, has been initiated in Japan. The project is headquartered at DPRI, Kyoto University, with major participants, including NIED (E-Defence) and multiple major Japanese design and construction firms. The project will utilize advanced numerical simulation, health monitoring systems installed in existing infrastructure, and large-scale testing, making use of facilities such as E-Defence, the world’s largest shake table facility. Research on the numerical simulation of tall building collapse has begun and large scale tests at E-Defence are planned for both steel and concrete high-rise buildings in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Amain focus of the project is on quantifying the margin between the design level and collapse of tall buildings and, most importantly, developing the ability to predict this margin through theory and numerical simulation. Also of interest is developing relationships between the building response and damage to facilitate prompt post-earthquake evaluation and decision making. To this end, the buildings tested at E-Defence will be outfitted with complete health monitoring systems. These systems will aim not only to report the existence of damage but to locate the damage with a goal of expediting repair efforts. This paper presents an overview of the structural damage disclosed in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, a summary of E-Defence facilities and large-scale tests conducted there, and the outline of the new research project. Needs and benefits of large-scale structural testing are discussed in light of the lessons learned from the damage in the 2011 Tohoku as well as the past experiences of E-Defence. The mechanism to make use of large-scale testing in the pursuit of the new research project is also noted to offer evidences of the benefits of large-scale testing.
