MCEER research on nuclear energy keynoted at 2015 SECED Conference at Cambridge

by Sarah D'Iorio

Andrew Whittaker, Director of MCEER and Professor and Chair for the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo, recently delivered the keynote for SECED 2015, a major earthquake and civil engineering dynamics conference in Cambridge, England.

In a conference that was themed Earthquake Risk and Engineering Towards a Resilient World, Whittaker’s keynote addressed Risk-based Seismic Isolation of Nuclear Facilities. Held on July 9-10, SECED 2015 was the first major conference to be organized in the United Kingdom on this topic since the 2002 European Conference on Earthquake Engineering in London. SECED 2015 attracted approximately 350 participants from 27 countries.

In his presentation, Whittaker described recent developments in the United States to implement seismic isolation in nuclear facilities, including the writing of risk-oriented standards for analysis and design of isolated nuclear structures, and the development, verification and validation of advanced numerical models for elastomeric and sliding isolators, and their implementation in LS-DYNA, ABAQUS and OpenSees—developments enabled by MCEER research by Manish Kumar, Michael Constantinou and Whittaker, with funding from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and United States Department of Energy.

The Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED) was founded in 1969 as an associated society of the Institution of Civil Engineers. The Institution of Structural Engineers, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the Geological Society sponsor SECED. For more information, visit www.seced.org.uk.