The National Science Foundation has recently funded a team lead by Robert Fleischman (Arizona), Chia-Ming Uang (UC-San Diego), James Ricles (Lehigh), and Richard Sause (Lehigh) to study chords and collectors in steel building structures. “The research will involve: (1) large-scale testing of collector elements in a steel composite floor system at the NHERI experimental facility at Lehigh University, (2) shake table testing of a 0.4-scale, single-story, steel composite floor system at the NHERI shake table facility at the University of California, San Diego, and (3) nonlinear analysis of steel structure collector elements, details and surrounding regions under seismic effects, and earthquake simulations of steel buildings under strong earthquakes.” see NSF for the full announcement.
The planned work is highly compatible with the SDII initiative and the SDII research team is collaborating in an effort to bring synergy to the two efforts. Further fruits of the the collaboration will be reported here at steeli.org.