Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center

[NEED NEW CONTENT] PEER is organizing a blind prediction contest for predicting the experimental results obtained from a Shaking Table test campaign carried out at the PEER Center, Berkeley, California, in collaboration with the University of Trento, Italy. The experimental tests, performed on a steel Moment Resisting Frame, pursued the aim of physically demonstrating the effectiveness of a novel device for seismic action mitigation, called Impact Mass Damper (IMD). The basic operating principle of the device is to induce counteracting impulsive forces on the structure. These impulsive forces have a high frequency content, therefore excite only the higher structural modes of vibration, subtracting energy from the first mode. The higher modes are normally associated with lower participant masses, and therefore the structural response is reduced due to the counteracting impulsive forces, which do not introduce additional dynamic effects on the controlled structure.

The contest is open to teams from the practicing structural engineering community and the academic and research community (including students). International entries are welcome. The winner from each category: one from researchers and another from practicing engineers, will be recognized and awarded.

While names and affiliations of all participating teams will be identified, results will be presented anonymously (unlabeled), except for those of the “winning” entries from each contestant category. The winners will be announced and awarded at the PEER Annual Meeting to be held at UC Berkeley in 2023. PEER will reimburse a representative of the winning team from each of two award categories allowable travel expenses to attend the PEER annual meeting.