PhD student Matiyas Bezabeh was awarded the Young Scientist Award at the 2018 World Conference on Timber Engineering held in Seoul Korea last month.
Bezabeh, who studies wind effect on tall timber buildings is pushing the boundaries of the research in this area according to his supervisor Dr. Solomon Tesfamariam.
“The construction of tall timber buildings is an emerging and sustainable construction method” explains Tesfamariam. “Matiyas’ research is having building code implications across North America.”
Due to the inherent characteristics of timber construction, the buildings are often lighter and more flexible than buildings constructed using more traditional methods. If not addressed, those characteristics can have negative impacts on the comfort level of the buildings’ occupants.
With over 800 conference participants at the WCTE, Bezabeh’s paper entitled “Probabilistic serviceability-performance assessment of tall mass-timber buildings subjected to stochastic wind loads” was recognized with the Young Scientist Award.
The research investigated the effects of a 1-in-10-year wind storm in Chicago on a 102-meters mass-timber building designed using the specifications of the 2010 National Building Code of Canada. For the wind performance prediction, Bezabeh conducted wind tunnel tests at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at Western University.
“It means a lot to have your work recognized at an important global conference like WTCE” says Bezabeh. “Our research continues to gain traction in the building community, and we are excited to see where it takes us.”
Following up on the success of this recent paper, Bezabeh is publishing two more related papers in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, a leading wind engineering research journal. Another research paper, published in Engineering Structures Journal, highlights the impact of tornado wind loads on the lateral stability of tall timber buildings.
This research was conducted in collaboration with Girma T. Bitsuamlak, who is a Canada Research Chair in Wind Engineering Tier II and directs the research at Western University’s WindEEE Research Institute and Marjan Popovski, principal scientist at FPinnovations.