1016 Advances in Numerical Methods for Analyzing Non-Structural Components in Buildings

 

Improperly secured furniture, especially on the upper floors of high-rise buildings under long-period ground motion, for example, can become dangerous objects for human life. Many tumbled furniture such as chairs and desks in schools could become fatal obstacles that obstruct children from evacuating. Therefore, it is important to know the overturning behaviors of these non-structural components under seismic excitations, as well as the behaviors and damages of the building itself. From this background, various shake-table tests for such specimen had been carried out, although such tests can be too costly to conduct repeatedly. To restrain the costs, numerical simulation techniques had been applied to investigate the motion behaviors of furniture. However, there are physically uncertain properties that have to be fixed in the models and there still lies strong need for verification and validation of the numerical codes. The main purpose of this mini-symposium is to bring together scientists and engineers who work in the fields mentioned above, and to discuss on the state-of-the-art numerical codes and the numerical analyses regarding motion behavior problems of non-structural components such as furniture, doors, ceilings and equipment placed in buildings.