Achievement

Ms. Sharma’s detailed dissertation proposal was developed and defended, investigating the necessary tasks for the performance based design of bamboo structures. Some of the tasks have already been completed. The initial tasks were supported by a research trip to northeast India to document and survey existing bamboo structures, as well as to engage with local engineers and architects in the region. The trip provided many details on the engineering challenges in the region and specific details for the computer model. Progress has been made on characterizing the seismic response spectrum for the region. Further work has been completed on the computer model and specific details have been selected to be investigated with scale model experiments during the Brazilian research rotation. Collaboration with the Brazilian host university, PUC-Rio, has been successful, engaging the department, as well as the undergraduate students in the project research.