New Zealand Research Applications of, and Developments in, Low Damage Technology for Steel Structures

Over the past few years, the South Island of New Zealand has been subject to significant sequences of earthquake shaking. In particular, 2010-2011 events affected the city of Christchurch resulting in large scale demolition of buildings. Also, the recent and continuing 11/2016 events caused severe damage in the countryside, in small towns, and moderate damage further afield. This paper describes some of the “low damage construction” methods being used in NZ, and especially in the Christchurch rebuild, to limit the possibility of building demolition in future large seismic events. The buildings used in the Christchurch rebuild are generally supported by structural steel framing. These steel buildings include BRB systems, EBF systems with replaceable active links, rocking systems, base isolation using friction pendulum systems and/or lead-rubber dissipaters, RBS beams, lead extrusion dissipaters, yielding flexural dissipaters, and friction connections. Concerns about a number of currently used systems are discussed.