Shaking Down the House

The Annual Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition, run as a part of annual meetings of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), is gaining more and more popularity every year. In 2009, 17 teams of undergrad students from U.S. universities participated and for the next year even more teams are expected. The event helps connect students with problems of real-life engineering and gives them tremendous motivation in their studies or research.

In this competition, participating student teams are required to construct a building-like structure. Their structure are then placed on Quanser’s Shake Table that simulates an earthquake. A panel of judges determines the winning team based on the structures’ performance.

This year, Sunny Ray, an engineer and academic solutions advisor from Quanser was appointed as a judge. For him, the highlights of the competition included the ‘final shake-down’, where teams can choose to shake their structures until they collapse and experiencing the students’ enthusiasm first-hand. Watch the short video to see how much fun learning can be.