News

Dr. Lydell Wiebe Receives Faculty Appreciation Award

Congratulations to Dr. Lydell Wiebe on receiving the Faculty Appreciation Award! This award honors faculty and staff within the Faculty of Engineering who have made a significant impact beyond the classroom, supporting undergraduate engineering students at McMaster University.

Laura Walters Awarded 2024 Catherine Lalonde Memorial Scholarships

The Canadian Wood Council (CWC) has awarded the 2024 Catherine Lalonde Memorial Scholarships to Laura Walters from McMaster University and Jiawen Shen from the University of British Columbia. Established 19 years ago in memory of Catherine Lalonde, these scholarships recognize graduate students advancing innovative research in the structural wood products industry. 

Hamid Madani Defends PhD

Congratulate to Hamid Madani for successfully defending his PhD thesis, "Towards more efficient shallow foundations for low-rise concentrically braced frame buildings!" This thesis evaluates the effects of soil and foundation on CBF buildings, exploring efficient foundation designs that consider material variability and seismic demand. Analytical equations are developed to estimate the movement of shallow footings during earthquakes, enhancing predictive capabilities. 

Lily Wins Best Paper Award in Seismic Design at STESSA 2024

Congratulations to Lily Wilson for receiving the Best Paper Award in Seismic Design at STESSA 2024 for her paper, "Design Examples of Controlled Rocking Braced Frames in Canadian Regions of Low Seismicity."

Wiebe research group at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Members of the Wiebe Research Group, including a former member, Taylor Steele, are attending the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Milan, Italy, this week.

Wiebe research group at CSCE conference 

Yara Soliman, Hamid Madani, and Lillian Wilson presented three papers at the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering conference in Niagra Falls, Canada.

New paper on the impact of economies of scale on seismic loss estimates

Congratulations to Dr. MirAmir Banihashemi on the publication of his new paper with a focus on modeling economies of scale for repair cost calculation and specifically highlighting the lack of a definition for aggregate damage, a quantity with considerable influence on the component repair costs. It is available Open Access from Earthquake Spectra at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/875529

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New paper on examining the replaceability of EASt-CRMW systems

Dr. Matthew East published a new paper that investigates the repairability and damage assessment of controlled rocking masonry walls with energy dissipation accessible in a steel base (EASt-CRMW). The paper is available in the Taylor & Francis's Journal of Earthquake Engineering. You can read the full paper here.

New paper on improving the performance of controlled rocking masonry walls

Congratulations to Dr. Matthew East on the publication of his paper on the strategies to reduce and quantify seismic damage in controlled rocking masonry walls. The paper is available in the ASCE's Journal of Structural Engineering. You can read the full paper here.

Wiebe research group at CCEE-PCEE 

Lydell Wiebe and Anirban Kundu presented two papers at the Canadian Conference - Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering (CCEE-PCEE) in Vancouver, Canada.

Celebrating Amir Banihashemi's Graduation 

Congratulations to Amir Banihashemi on his graduation! This achievement reflects his dedication and hard work throughout his academic journey. We appreciate his valuable contributions to our research group and wish him the best in his future endeavours. Well done, Amir!

EASt-CRMW systems are out!

Dr. Matthew East published a paper on controlled rocking masonry walls with energy dissipation accessible in a steel base, namely EASt-CRMWs, in the ASCE's Journal of Structural Engineering. This paper is now available here.

New Paper on Controlled Rocking Masonry Walls

Dr. Ahmed Yassin's paper on quasi-static cyclic testing of controlled rocking masonry walls with flexural yielding devices has been published in the Journal of Structural Engineering! This paper is now available on ASCE's website at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/JSENDH.STENG-11258.

New Paper on Energy Dissipation Devices

Congratulations to Dr. Matthew East on the publication of his paper on the development of easily replaceable energy dissipation devices employing steel flexural yielding arms! The paper is available in the ASCE's Journal of Structural Engineering. You can read the full paper here.

New Paper on Structural and Nonstructural Seismic Upgrade Strategies

Dr. Paul Steneker's paper on a framework for quickly evaluating the viability of different seismic upgrade options, with integrated identification of non-structural upgrades, has now been published. It is available Open Access from Earthquake Spectra at https://doi.org/10.1177/87552930211065771. 

Paper Published in Journal of Structural Engineering

Congratulations to Dr. Ahmed Yassin on the publication of his paper describing the impressive tests he performed on controlled rocking masonry walls without post-tensioning! The paper is available in the ASCE's Journal of Structural Engineering at https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0003307.

Drs. Wiebe and Koboevic Receive HA Krentz Award from the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction

Dr. Wiebe and Dr. Sanda Koboevic of Polytechnique Montreal have jointly been awarded the HA Krentz Award from the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC). Each year, this award is given for the research grant proposal with special merit and interest to the Canadian structural steel industry. This research grant and award are being used in part to support PhD candidate Hamid Madani's research on developing more economical foundation design provisions for steel braced frames in Canada. Further information is available here: https://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/civil/news/lydell-wiebe-presented-ha-krentz-award-canadian-institute-steel-construction and https://www.cisc-icca.ca/congrats-to-the-2021-cisc-h-a-krentz-award-recipients-sanda-koboevic-lydell-wiebe.

Anirban Kundu Enrolls in PhD Program

Anirban Kundu, who first came to McMaster as a MITACS Globalink Research Intern (https://www.mitacs.ca/en/programs/globalink/globalink-research-internship) while an undergraduate student, and then returned to McMaster in 2021 as an MASc student, has now transferred to the PhD program effective January 1, 2022. Anirban is co-supervised with Dr. Georgios Balomenos (https://sites.google.com/view/georgiosbalomenos), studying the seismic risk of steel designed according to Canadian standards for Conventional Construction.

Hamid Madani is now a PhD Candidate 

Congratulations to Hamid Madani on successfully completing his PhD Comprehensive Examination!

Ahmed Yassin Defends PhD

Congratulate to Ahmed Yassin for successfully defending his PhD thesis, "Development of Controlled Rocking Masonry Walls!" This thesis includes both experimental and numerical work on controlled rocking masonry walls, and the defence committee described it using words like "outstanding" and "forward-looking."

Sam and Kelly Left our Research Group

Thanks to Sam Richardson and Kelly de Chastelain Finnigan for all their work this summer! Kelly and Sam were a huge help in the Applied Dynamics Laboratory to support the testing of controlled rocking masonry walls, while also developing this website, a classroom demo frame, and a load calculation spreadsheet. Good luck as you move on to Level III of your studies at McMaster!

Matt Ficara Completed his MASc

Congratulations to Matt Ficara for completing his MASc on controlled rocking mass timber walls! Matt is now working as an Engineer-in-Training for Tetra Tech Canada.

Paper Published on Artificial Neural Network for Nuclear Power Plant Behaviour

Nuclear Engineering and Technology has published Dr. Mohamed El-Sefy's work on developing a new approach for predicting the dynamic behaviour of nuclear power plants by using an artificial neural network. This work was completed as part of the NSERC-CREATE program on Canadian Nuclear Energy Infrastructure Resilience Under Systemic Risk. The paper can be downloaded for free at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.net.2021.05.003.

Paper on Critical Connections Published in Engineering Structures

Dr. Paul Steneker's research on identifying and selecting critical connections for steel moment resisting frames has now been published in Engineering Structures! This paper looks at how to locate the connections that have the greatest influence on seismic response, and based on this knowledge, how to maximize the benefit of selectively applying emerging connection details that offer enhanced performance. Until July 23, the paper can be downloaded for free at: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1dArdW4G4TeNd

Congratulations To Matt East For Winning the M.A. Hatzinikolas Award

Matt East received the M.A. Hatzinikolas Award at the CMS for the best paper by a graduate student related to innovation and construction.  His paper was on Evaluating Damage of a Controlled Rocking Masonry Wall with Supplemental Energy Dissipation.

A News Story About the Canadian Masonry Symposium

This weekend was the latest annual Canadian Masonry Symposium.  Multiple members of the research group presented with many others attending.  We would like to congratulate everyone who gave a lecture for their incredible work and thank the CMS for putting together a great event!

Two Undergraduate Students Join the Wiebe Research Group for the Summer

Welcome to Kelly de Chastelain Finnigan and Sam Richardson!  Both have just completed their second year at McMaster University studying civil engineering.