University of Tokyo - Department of Architecture

Department of Architecture

Shiohara Laboratory


Protect our lives, livelihoods, and society from disasters through proven and highly reliable building structural technologies based on correct predict of seismic damage and necessary countermeasures
 
Research Theme

In order to protect our lives and society from earthquake disasters in a mature society that has invested enormous amounts of social capital in urban infrastructure, we are conducting research on evaluating the nonlinear behavior of reinforced concrete building until collapse during earthquakes, rationalizing the evaluation of seismic motion characteristics, improving the reliability of current components design methods, investigating damage to buildings caused by earthquakes, and promoting next-generation performance-based seismic design that focuses on the performance of buildings.

Behavior of reinforced concrete building structural components until failure

Most of the past seismic damage was due to unknown structural weaknesses in structural components or their joints, or due to unexpected weaknesses. Therefore, we are working on the elucidation of unknown weaknesses of structural components and the maturation and verification of design methods corresponding to the weakness.

 
Modeling of the behavior of building until collapse under major earthquakes

In order to minimize the influence of human judgment and improve the reliability of the nonlinear mathematical models when adapting them to various buildings for the simulation of building behavior in earthquake, we are improving the mathematical models and verifying their applicability and adaptability using blind analysis of partial frame experiments and data from the destruction experiments of full-scale buildings conducted by three-dimensional shaking table.


 
Study on the social diffusion of performance-based seismic design

We are working on expressing the seismic performance of buildings by some easy-to-understand numerical index such as restoration time, restoration cost, and functional retention time of equipment after earthquake based on the damage status of structural components, non-structural components, and building equipment. We aim to investigate the international trends and establish a standard evaluation method for application in Japan about performance-type seismic designs in which the designer and the building owner agree on the level of seismic performance design goals using the value index.

 

For more detail: Shiohara & Tajiri Lab
Principal Investigator: Hitoshi Shiohara