VOLUME 12, NO. 3     MAY 1999

Partners for earthquake study

From left, Hou, Noori and Suzuki with Larisa Schelkin, CLPSI coordinator.

PI's leadership in developing earthquake-proof building materials and ways to measure structural damage has led to a partnership between researchers from the University's Center for Loss Prevention and Structural Integrity (CLPSI) and their counterparts in Japan. The partnership will provide exchange opportunities for scientists and engineers and could ultimately lead to a reduction in earthquake damage in Japanese buildings.

In March, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, senior researcher at the Japanese Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Mohammad Noori, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department and CLPSI director, and Zhikun Hou, associate professor of mechanical engineering, finalized arrangements for a U.S.-Japan program between DPRI and CLPSI. Noori and Hou were part of an eight-member delegation from the United States that attended the Smart Materials and New Technologies for Improvement of Seismic Performance of Urban Structures workshop in February in Kyoto, Japan.

"WPI is one of 12 major American research universities selected to participate in a five-year cooperative research initiative involving the two countries," says Noori. "This elite group includes the University of California, Berkeley, Caltech, Stanford, the University of Illinois, Texas A&M and the University of Southern California."

Established in 1997, CLPSI is an international university/industry alliance whose mission is to carry out fundamental and applied research, develop new methodologies, utilize advanced and emerging technologies for loss prevention and structural integrity, and create professional training programs in relevant areas. Current projects include research on shape memory alloys-materials that can absorb the shock energy of massive earthquakes and have the potential to prevent damage and save lives-and building "smart structures" that can withstand the shock of an earthquake. As part of the new agreement, three Japanese researchers will work at WPI next fall and Noori and Hou will travel to Japan several times in the coming years to build scale-model structures to test these alloys.

"The collaboration is the realization of CLPSI's founding vision," says Noori. "It establishes our center as a major resource in the United States for developing 'smart' buildings." For more information about CLPSI, visit me.wpi.edu/~clpsi.