Auckland’s old brick buildings are on shaky ground

23 May 2007

Auckland’s old brick buildings are on shaky ground

An engineering student has received a prestigious government scholarship to study how Auckland’s early brick buildings will cope in an earthquake.

PhD student Aaron Wilson, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of Auckland, will conduct world-first field studies of clay brick buildings built before 1925. They are common in the commercial centres of Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Newmarket and Parnell.

These buildings are unlikely to perform well in an earthquake, but little field research has been undertaken into just how much damage they would sustain, and how they can be protected.

“If New Zealand is hit by a major earthquake, we stand to lose many of our heritage buildings and suffer millions of dollars in damage and reconstruction costs,” Aaron says.

Aaron received one of only 50 Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships, awarded by the Tertiary Education Commission to New Zealand’s brightest scholars conducting doctoral research.

He says un-reinforced masonry was a construction method New Zealand inherited from the UK at the beginning of the 20th century - its popularity helped because the materials were readily available.

“When the Napier earthquake hit in 1931, almost all un-reinforced masonry buildings were destroyed, and its use subsequently declined in popularity, until it was precluded by law in 1965,” Aarons says.

“However many Auckland buildings have never been seismically retrofitted to bring them up to standard.”

Aaron plans to use the Faculty of Engineering’s new Mobile Field Laboratory to simulate an earthquake on an actual un-reinforced masonry building, using a machine called a shaker.

“The test will be destructive, so I am hoping to be granted access to an un-reinforced masonry building being scheduled for demolition, which we can use as a testing ground. I will begin by testing parts of buildings with the long term goal of testing a complete structure,” Aaron says.

Aaron’s supervisor, Associate Professor Jason Ingham, says almost no-infield testing has been undertaken on this type of building anywhere in the world.

“Aaron’s results will help to validate the accuracy of laboratory studies of unreinforced masonry and ultimately help develop national guidelines on the most effective way to retrofit these buildings against seismic risk,” Professor Ingham says.

ENDS

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