The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/earthquakes/)
The McLaskey Research Group, led by Prof. Gregory McLaskey, civil and environmental engineering, has made a breakthrough in the study of earthquakes by experimentally showing that the fracture energy and breakdown energy of earthquakes are not equivalent.
“The process is not us telling them what to do, but rather helping them understand the implications of our research,” Dr. Lucy Jones said.
If you’ve ever seen footage of enormous buildings swaying uncontrollably during an earthquake or actually felt the Earth opening under your feet, you would know just how terrifying an earthquake can be. For people in earthquake prone areas who have to endure the natural phenomena on a regular basis, it is important that their homes are safer and more resilient. A project team at Cornell aims to help with that. Cornell University Seismic Design Team, started in 2013, works to model and prototype earthquake resilient buildings as part of an annual competition, Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition, organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. For the competition, various national and international teams submit a prototype of a building capable of withstanding varying earthquake magnitudes within certain architectural constraints.