Seminar - Yue Li (Michigan Tech) - Risk Assessment of Light-Frame Residential Construction Subjected to Hurricane and Seismic Hazards
Monday 25 August 2008, 1.10 - 1.55 pm
Civil Engineering Lecture Theatre 3
Abstract:
Hurricanes and earthquakes have caused extensive property damage to light-frame residential construction in the past two decades in the United States. In order to improve residential building performance and mitigate losses from hurricane and earthquake hazards, there is an urgent need for better understanding of building performance and improvements in design and evaluation tools. In this presentation, a fragility analysis methodology is developed for assessing the response of light-frame wood construction exposed to extreme hurricane winds and earthquakes. The fragility is a conditional limit state probability, presented as a function of the 3-second gust wind speed (hurricanes) or spectral acceleration at the fundamental period of the building (earthquakes), leading to a relation between damage state probability and the hazard stipulated in ASCE Standard 7. A fully coupled probabilistic framework is proposed to assess reliability of the residential construction through convolution of the structural fragility model with hazard models. Finally, a comparative risk assessment addresses the similarities and differences in competing hurricane and earthquake hazards. The tools above can be used to evaluate new and existing building products, model the uncertainties that are inherent to the prediction of building performance, and manage the risk that is consequent to these uncertainties economically.
Author bio:
Dr. Yue Li joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan Technological University as Donald and Rose Ann Tomasini Assistant Professor of Structural Engineering in August 2005. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering, with an emphasis in Structural Engineering, from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 2005.
Dr. Li’s research interests include bridge engineering, structural reliability analysis, probabilistic design, natural and man-made hazard mitigation, structural load modeling and combinations of loads, structural health monitoring and condition assessment, performance-based engineering, earthquake engineering, wind engineering, and wood engineering. He received Michigan Tech Research Excellent Fund Award in 2008.
He has published in such journals as Journal of Structural Engineering, Australian Journal of Structural Engineering, Engineering Structures, and Structural Safety. His teaching interests include basic structural engineering, probability, statistical and engineering decision analysis, structural reliability and performance-based structural design. He has worked as a structural engineer for five years, and was involved in the design of new international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.