October 18, 1999
Contact: Ranjit Arab, University Relations, (785) 864-8855.
LAWRENCE -- Two University of Kansas engineering professors, who will tour earthquake-ravaged Turkey later this month, hope to find some valuable answers among the buildings that managed to survive.
Steven McCabe, chair of the civil engineering department, and JoAnn Browning, assistant professor of civil engineering, will travel to northern Turkey for six days on Oct. 23. Once there, they will observe the damage inflicted on concrete structures by the Aug. 17 earthquake that claimed more than 15,000 lives and registered 7.4 on the Richter Scale.
McCabe said that he and Browning would tour buildings with only moderate damage, so they could determine what allowed those structures to survive, while so many others crumbled.
"By looking at the damage patterns of what survived and what did not, we can see how the systems behaved," McCabe said. "What we learn can help us make stronger and safer structures, not only in the U.S. but in the rest of the world as well."
McCabe said the decision to travel to Turkey was based on the fact that the KU department has several professors dedicated to researching the effects of seismic activity on concrete structures. Specifically, he and Browning will evaluate the anchorage of reinforcement in concrete structures, as well as the mechanical splicing of reinforcing bars in concrete, he said.
Just prior to their visit to Turkey, McCabe will attend the International Federation of Concrete in Prague, Czech Republic. At the conference, McCabe said he would participate in a task force that will develop a model for designing steel structures in seismic conditions.
McCabe said the observations in Turkey would be documented on videotape and photographs, both of which would be used to relay their findings to colleagues and students.
For Browning, the visit marks the first time she has been in the field to observe earthquake damage. Although she did extensive research on a seven-story hotel that survived the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, Calif., she worked from a lab rather than on-site because the building was specially equipped with instruments that recorded all of the ground motions and some building response motions. This time, however, the research will be hands-on, she said.
"It's always an advantage in teaching and in research to have actual pictures of earthquake damage that point out details that were not effective for the structure, or details that worked well which we should be aware of," she said.
The department is considering touring other recent earthquake sites in Taiwan and Mexico, but Browning said that cost was an issue. "We would love to continue these tours, but it all depends on funding," she said.
To that end, McCabe said that the civil engineering department recently applied for several grants with the National Science Foundation worth more than $1 million to help them continue their earthquake-related research.