Joint IES seminar Wednesday 23 Oct
Venue: AGB Seminar Room (3rd floor), Alexander Graham Bell Building, The King's
Buildings
Speaker: Dr George Vasdravellis, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University
Title: Designing for seismic resilience: Self-centering steel moment resisting frames with
novel steel dampers
Abstract: Self-centering steel frames have been recently developed as an alternative to
conventional moment-resisting frames aiming to eliminate structural damage and to provide
increased resilience standards under extreme earthquakes. A new self-centering steel posttensioned (PT) connection has been recently proposed and experimentally validated. The
connection uses high-strength steel post-tensioned bars to provide self-centering behavior and
novel steel energy dissipation elements that can be easily replaced after a seismic event. This
presentation will discuss the main results of the experimental validation of the proposed
configuration. Numerical simulation results, including finite element models for the
connection level as well as nonlinear dynamic analyses of multi-story frames with PT
connections, will also be presented. Finally, current research on this field and future research
planned to be carried out will be presented and discussed.
Dr George Vasdravellis obtained his MEng degree in Civil Engineering from Democritus
University of Thrace (Greece) in 2003. In 2007, he was awarded his PhD title from the
Polytechnic School of Milan (Italy) for his research on the seismic behaviour of steelconcrete composite structures. After a three-year period working as structural engineer in
Greece, George was appointed as Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2010) with the Institute for
Infrastructure Engineering (IIE) of the University of Western Sydney (Australia). In 2013,
George was appointed as Lecturer in Structural Engineering with the Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, UK. His current research is mainly focused on the development, assessment and
application of innovative structural typologies that can realize a minimal-damage design
concept under extreme natural or man-made hazards. Other research fields include:
sustainability in construction with emphasis on the demountability and reuse of materials;
development of novel and cost-effective damping devices for structures and bridges;
retrofitting of existing buildings; advanced numerical simulation of structures.