The UB seismic design team's skyscraper during the third ground motion test of the 2017 competition
Published May 8, 2017 This content is archived.
At this year’s Seismic Design Competition in March, UB’s team finished in tenth place overall. The UB seismic design team consisted of Damian Andreani, Jack Kennedy, Casey Bunce, juniors Foley Chew and Michael Zullo, sophomores Tyler Hurlbutt and Joseph Suk, and freshman Paolo Bourdeau. There were ten additional members who did not attend the competition, but helped immensely throughout the year.
The team finished in a better overall spot than it has in the previous eight years, and placed well in some of the other categories. UB’s team finished fifth in presentation, fifth in seismic cost and twelfth in seismic predictions.
The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) invites between 33 – 37 student clubs from colleges and universities across the country to participate in its seismic design competition.
“Each school designs and constructs a scale skyscraper from balsa wood,” said Damian Andreani, a senior and member of the UB seismic design team since 2016. “Teams have to meet certain requirements, including weight and dimension restrictions. Once this is all said and done, teams are scored and placed based on the performance, presentation and architectural design of their structure.”
Andreani described this event as a great opportunity to network, as a wide range of companies, and students from at least thirty other universities were in attendance
UB has competed in the national, invite-only competition since its inception in 2004, with various results. In 2009, UB earned third place, and in March of this year, UB’s team had its best finish in nearly a decade.
The 2017 EERI Seismic Design Competition took place in Portland Oregon. A different city hosts the competition every year. Some previous locations are San Francisco, California, Anchorage, Alaska, and Boston, Massachusetts. Buffalo is an option to host the 2019 competition.
Members of UB’s team wanted to thank professors Andreas Stavridis, one of their advisers, Andrew Whittaker, Anthony Tessari, Kamelia Monfared-Atefi, Andrea Filiatrault, Mettupalayam Sivaselvan, Christine Human, Negar Khorasani, advisors Todd Snyder (ASCE) and Mark Hare (the graduate advisor), Taylor Devices, specifically Craig Winters, Bob Schneider and Craig Keller, and The UB Graduate EERI Chapter, for helping them through the design and competition process.