Earthquake Engineering Research - HKU Libraries - The University ...

351
necessarily had significant working experience using them.
Structural engineers that have had seismic design experience in high seismic risk areas are likely to
have less difficulty adapting to a new code in HK than those who have had no seismic experience.
They may not, however, easily adapt their knowledge of design in regions of high seismicity to a
region of low/moderate seismicity during the schematic design stage of a project This is because it is
not necessary or appropriate to design structures in these regions for high levels of ductility. A further
complication is that whereas HK, China and Europe use separate material factors for steel and concrete
the US, Australia and New Zealand adopt strength reduction factors. This makes it more difficult to
compare the codes.
HK has some unique types of construction, especially when considering the dominance of residential
high-rise construction. Different materials, types of construction and heights will mean that experience
gained in other countries may not be readily transferred to HK, Concrete frames are predominately
used for commercial buildings in New Zealand and Australia but their residential buildings are mainly
low rise or separate family dwellings. In the US, although there are numerous concrete buildings, steel
framing is mainly used for their commercial high-rise buildings.
EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Educational Challenges for introduction of seismic codes
One of the key challenges for educators in cities considering introducing seismic provisions in their
codes is to ensure that the local practicing structural engineers are well prepared for the more
challenging conceptual and detailed design requirements of seismic design. This is required so as to
ensure that the economic, functional and aesthetic qualities of the built environment are not
excessively compromised.
It is at the schematic design stage that it is necessary to provide sound structural advice to the architect
Inappropriate structural forms will result in additional cost or time implications to the project and
could produce buildings that might experience significant structural failure during a severe seismic
event.
In order to determine how best to put across the key seismic design issues it is useful to consider the
structural engineer's experience. Generally in HK there is a difference between the working
experiences gained by structural engineers who design buildings as compared to civil engineers who
design structures such as bridges, port facilities, dams, pumping facilities etc. Civil and geotechnical
engineers in HK tend to be more familiar with design using more variable materials and more
uncertain loads such as vehicle loads, impact, temperature, varying water tables etc. On the other hand
structural engineers for buildings in HK mainly design for dead, live, wind and soil loads in
accordance with rigid codes and even wind loads are still fairly basic and generally follow a simplified
form of the method used in the outdated British code of practice CP3.
Geotechnical engineers are more familiar with designing for consequence of failure in slope design.
Post university training of structural engineers seldom require consideration of such topics. Structural
engineers generally do not have to make decisions based on subjective criteria and often consider that
their computer analysis and design models reflect an accuracy that hi reality may not necessarily exist
This higher level of uncertainty of seismic design as compared to design without seismic
considerations may adversely affect the ready comprehension of the requirements by practicing