EERI UNDERGRADUATE SEISMIC DESIGN COMPETITION

The annual Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition brings together students from over 50 global universities to create the most seismically ingenious design for a high-rise building. Teams give a technical presentation to support their cost analysis, seismic analysis, and structural and architectural concept of the building. A balsa wood structure model encompassing these ideas must be built and tested on a shake table that will produce up to magnitude 9.0 earthquakes! Teams will be judged on their oral presentation, poster, and how well their structures perform on the shake table. The final ranking in the competition depends on the annual income of each building. Other factors contributing to the final ranking include architecture, communications, and analysis prediction of building performance.

2021 eeri undergraduate seismic design
online competition

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition was organized online virtually. Each participating team was tasked to analyze the geotechnical and structural aspects of an existing hospital building in Downtown Seattle in the event of an earthquake. The hospitals were to be expanded with new additions and retrofitted to withstand additional loads and seismic events. The teams also had to design the exterior architectural and interior layout of the hospital. The competition tasks were divided into 4 deliverable submissions, with each deliverable due 3 weeks apart. At the end of the 4th deliverable, each team is required to submit a poster and present the retrofitted hospital building to a panel of judges via Zoom. The teams were evaluated based on their hospital structural and architectural design, team spirit and team communication.

For more information on the competition, please refer to the EERI SLC website.