NUS Engineering students bag top prizes in APEC-IDEERS Earthquake Challenge 2009

08 Oct 2009

Despite stiff competition at this year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation - Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering in Schools (APEC - IDEERS) competition held from 24 to 28 September, the NUS teams under the mentorship of the Department of Civil Engineering's Dr Pang Sze Dai, bagged both the first and third prizes.

The Civil Engineering team led by Mr Harrif Santo and comprising Mr Kwa Chin Soon, Mr James Wijaya and Ms Liu Lihui took the first prize of $20,000 cash (Taiwan dollars), certificates and trophy. The Engineering Science Programme team led by Mr Siah Sin Cheng, comprising Mr Li Peifeng, Mr Melvin Fong and Mr Cai Dingyan came in third, winning a cash prize of $10,000 (Taiwan Dollars), trophy and certificates.

The competition aims to promote earthquake engineering and seismic protection education and since its introduction, it has evolved from a national competition for secondary school students in the UK to become the world's largest international seismic resistant structural design competition. Since 2001, the APEC-IDEERS competition is hosted and organised annually by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taiwan, with National Applied Research Laboratories, the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, the Asia-Pacific Network of Centers for Earthquake Engineering Research, the British Council and the University of Bristol.

Putting into practice the theories they have learnt in structural mechanics and dynamics, as well as the experiential learning from model testing, both NUS teams built models that incorporate key features of seismic resistant structures, such as damper brace system, strong column-weak beam strength hierarchy and joints with high rotational capacities.

Achieving exceptionally high efficiency indices of 66.85 and 60.933 respectively for the winning models they have designed and built, the NUS teams have clearly demonstrated an in-depth understanding and appreciation of the principles behind seismic resistant structures, as compared to the average efficiency index of 35.95 for teams in the undergraduate category.

This year, a total of 42 teams participated in the undergraduate category, representing over 37 universities such as the University of Auckland, Bristol University and the Hongkong University of Science and Technology.