Three NCREE teams awarded at the 2009 blind analysis contest

In March 2009, the E-Defense steel building research team, sponsored by the National Research Institute for earth Science and Disaster Prevention in Japan, organized the blind analysis contest for a full-scale 5-story structure using the world's largest three-dimensional shaking table located at Miki City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. 

The specimens were tested under the combination of two damper types, i.e., Japanese steel dampers and American viscous dampers; and two analysis methods, i.e., 3D- and 2D-analyses. Each participant was requested to predict the test specimen's responses before as well as after it is shaken with the intense near-fault ground motions recorded during the 1995 Kobe earthquake. And the closest predictions to the test results were awarded.

There were 52 international teams, including three from the NARL's National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), participated in this contest. The three NARL- NCREE teams took the second and third places in the 2-D and 3-D buckling-restrained braced frame categories, respectively, and the third place in the 3-D viscous damper steel frame category.