Bruneau earns grant to develop details for SpeedCore use in regions where wind demands exceed seismic demands in structures

By Peter Murphy

Published October 25, 2021

SUNY Distinguished Professor Michel Bruneau received a $198,000 grant from the Charles Pankow Foundation.

Protections in wind-heavy regions

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The project will develop and experimentally validate bolted splice details for Composite Plate Shear Walls-Concrete Filled (C-PSW/CF), or SpeedCore. Bruneau has conducted extensive research on these types of walls in the past. In 2017, he worked with Professor Amit Varma at Purdue University, on another Pankow Foundation grant, to advance the wind and seismic design of SpeedCore. He has also determined the R-factor for the seismic design of coupled SpeedCore walls developed to absorb earthquake energy in well-identified repairable locations.

Michel Bruneau.

SUNY Distinguished Professor Michel Bruneau

One of the differences between Bruneau’s previous work and this project is the connection used for the walls. The work he has conducted on C-PSW/CF to this point has focused primarily on welded connections. There are currently no experimentally-verified bolted splice details for these walls. The absence of this information creates a critical hurdle in parts of the country where construction practice relies on field bolting rather than welding, in places like Chicago, Boston and New York.

“C-PSW/CF is rapidly becoming an attractive option for the lateral force resisting system of buildings, due to its many positive features, but largely on account of its rapid speed of construction,” Bruneau says. “This translates into massive savings, particularly when used in buildings having a core-wall system – particularly high-rise construction.”