Recent earthquakes have demonstrated that our current design criteria, mainly focused on life safety, are not meeting our society expectations. Among the available technologies to provide seismic resilient structures, the Pres-Lam system has proved to be a sustainable design option for achieving low damage timber structures.
The concept relies on unbonded post-tensioning tendons to provide moment capacity to beam-column, wall-foundation or column-foundation connections. Supplemental energy dissipation can be introduced by mild steel bars, or replaceable damping devices, when designing buildings for high seismic risk areas.
To date, 10 Pres-Lam structures have been constructed around the world between New Zealand, Europe, Japan and the United States, while others are currently under design.
This presentation will outline the main features of the Pres-Lam system and provide recent data obtained by monitoring the performance of operative buildings.
Speaker
Gabriele Granello, Research Associate, University of Edinburgh
Gabriele is currently a Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh. Before arriving to the UK in early 2021, he was a JSPS Post-doctoral fellow at the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), University of Tokyo, and a Lecturer in Structural Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch (New Zealand).
During Gabriele's career, he has collaborated with several academic institutions, among which the University of Padova (Italy), the University of New South Wales (Australia), ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Oregon State University (US).
Gabriele's research expertise lies in the space of structural and earthquake engineering, with focus on timber structures and structural health monitoring.