Distinguished Japanese Scholars Attend Seminar at School of Civil Engineering

On Aug. 2nd, three well-known Japanese experts, Professor Horiuchi Toshihiko, Professor Kajiwara Koichi and associate Professor Nagae Takuya were invited to attend the “Think Tank Forum” held at the Earthquake Engineering Comprehensive Simulation Innovation and Intelligence Induction Base at Tianjin University. Nearly 30 teachers and graduates were at the forum and listened to their reports.

Prof. Horiuchi, the main researcher of Japan’s Disaster Prevention Institute of Science and Technology, is mainly engaged in the control and application of vibration test equipment and the development of a new isolation system. He first introduced the preparation, construction and operation of the earthquake resistance center (E-Defense) inMitsui hyogo, Japan, which is about 600 km away from Tokyo. After the Hyougo-Nanbu earthquake in 1995, the Japanese government decided to build a disaster prevention science and technology institute of Hyogo seismic work center, which was completed in 2005. Since then the center has completed three major research projects, namely structure collapse and prevention technology (2005-2007), function evaluation of non-structural components and structures (2007-2011), and flexible structure health monitoring (2011-2019).

Prof. Kajiwara has studied structural seismic resistance, vibration control and system control theory of vibration table for many years. He has abundant experience in the operation of large vibration table facilities. He won the Japanese seismological society Heisei 28 Annual Merit Award for outstanding contributions and Heisei 29 annual Hyogo credit recognition. Prof. Kajiwara elaborated on the history of E-Defense shaking table tests. He used a wealth of valuable video data on site to reproduce the destruction process of buildings due to the action of earthquakes.

Then Associate Prof. Nagae who works at the Disaster Mitigation Research Center at Nagoya University, Japan, gave a report entitled "Systematic Test of Residents and Office Buildings Based on E-defense." Prof. Nagae explained the earthquake-resistant system of Japan through a large number of practical cases. This report helped the audience to have a thorough understanding of the earthquake resistant system of buildings in Japan.

By the School of Civil Engineering

Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington