Fazlur R. Khan Virtual Distiguished Lecture -- P. Benson Shing

"Understanding the Seismic Performance of Structural Systems through Large-scale Experiments and Computational Simulations"

P. Benson Shing, professor of Structural Engineering at the University of California San Diego, focuses his research on the seismic performance of reinforced concrete and masonry structures, and the advancement of design and assessment methods through computational modeling and large-scale laboratory experiments.  His research has been supported by a number of agencies, including NSF, NIST, California Department of Transportation, Colorado Department of Transportation, and the Applied Technology Council.

Abstract: The development of design standards for seismic force resisting systems has been relying on data from numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. for a long period of time. However, these simulations have often been performed with highly simplified computational models either because of their computational efficiency or because of the lack of more refined model options. This lecture demonstrates the importance of structural system testing and refined computational modeling to the advancement of design standards for reinforced masonry structures, and presents some recent work along this direction including major findings.