Earthquakes are a natural phenomena and we can’t do anything to stop them. What we can do is to take precautions to minimize the destruction caused by them. It is a well-known fact that cold-formed steel is much lighter and more elastic than the materials we usually use in construction like concrete and masonry. It also has the ability to better absorb energy by dissipating the force of seismic activity.
To test how these cold-formed steel structures would perform under a real earthquake, a team of engineers from the University of San Diego constructed a six-story CFS building. This was built on top of the world’s largest outdoor seismic shake table and was the tallest ever CFS structure to undergo tests on the shake table.
California’s 1994 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake was replicated here. The earthquake had resulted in 57 deaths and 8,700 injuries. The building was designed to replicate a multi-family residential place, equipped with water heaters and stoves that have a chance of combusting if moved too much in a violent manner.
You can watch the video yourself to see how cold-formed steel fares under conditions that replicate an earthquake.
