Scholars from University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan Making Significant Progress on Collaborative Projects with the MAE Center
Visiting scholars Mohammad Ashraf and Khan Shahzada, Faculty members and PhD students from the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan have spent the past 6 months collaborating with the MAE Center on projects that are examining the seismic response of buildings typically found in Pakistan. These projects are being funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan as part of a larger academic collaboration effort designed to establish linkages between Pakistani universities and U.S. Universities. The collaborative projects between the MAE Center and the University of Illinois with University of Engineering & Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan began in early 2007 and are expected to be completed sometime in the Spring of 2011.
Ashraf is currently working on a project titled the“Development of Cost-effective and Efficient Retrofitting Technique(s) for Masonry Buildings in Pakistan”, whereas Shahzada is working on the “Seismic Risk Assessment of Buildings in Pakistan (case study: Abbottabad City)” project. These two projects come following the successful collaboration with previous visiting scholar Zakir Hussain who worked on the “Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation to Evaluate the Energy Dissipation Capacity of Unreinforced Brick Masonry Buildings” project. The results from all these three researchers work will be incorporated in the building code of Pakistan.
For this project, Khan Shahzada has fabricated a full scale single story unreinforced masonry building and tested it for lateral load carrying capacity. He has also fabricated and tested a reduced-scale three story confined masonry building on the Shaking Table of the Earthquake Engineering Center at the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar. He plans to conduct additional testing on a two story reinforced concrete building that is currently being constructed by the Department of Civil Engineering UET Peshawar.
Both Ahsraf and Shahzada are PhD students of Professor Akhtar Naeem Khan, the Principal Investigator of the project from the Pakistan side. At the MAE Center the two are working on advanced techniques in earthquake engineering with Prof. Amr. S. Elnashai, the principal Investigator of the project from US side.
Khan Shahzada Mohammad Ashraf
Reduced-scale three story confined masonry buildings showing structural damage after a shake table test conducted at the Earthquake Engineering Center at the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar, Pakistan
Full scale unreinforced masonry building fabricated and tested for lateral load capacity evaluation in the Earthquake Engineering Center at the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar, Pakistan
