The ETH zürich, the NTU of Athens, and PEER invite the earthquake engineering community to participate in a blind prediction contest where the response of a small-scale physical model of a masonry structure to a bin of ground motions is sought.
Previous contests have shown that the response of a masonry structure to a given ground motion is hard to predict. This is not a surprise, as the response of masonry involves rocking motion and it has been shown that it is often impossible to predict the response even of a solitary rocking block. However, it is much easier (and still highly useful) to predict the statistics of the response of a rocking block to a bin of excitations.
To this end, this contest will focus on the response of 1:15 scaled physical models of a masonry 3-wall structure. The specimens were tested on a shaking table within the ETH geotechnical centrifuge to preserve the similitude of stresses and were excited by 29 ground motions. A virgin specimen was used for each excitation. The specimens were 3D printed using binder jet technology. Notches were printed to emulate masonry joints, as this approach has been shown to be efficient in creating physical models that behave very similarly to masonry under low axial loads.
The purpose of the contest is to evaluate the performance of the numerical models in predicting the dynamic behavior of a masonry structure when material and component level behavior is given. In parallel, the usefulness of calibrating numerical models on ambient vibration measurements will be explored.
The research for this blind prediction contest was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under Starting Grant 803908.