UNBC civil engineering assistant professor Ramla Qureshi will be using models to study how wood-steel hybrid buildings would perform under the most difficult and dangerous conditions.

Designing buildings with steel frames and cross-laminated timber or other engineered wood products for floors and walls, instead of concrete, would make them lighter and reduce their environmental footprint. 

The question for builders and policy makers is, how would such buildings handle disasters like fires and earthquakes?

“Engineers need to have a certain level of reliability in a structure’s performance against extreme hazards such as earthquakes and fires throughout the building’s life cycle,” Qureshi said.

“Especially in places with considerable seismic activity, such as British Columbia, we need to understand and quantify the risks from such events that can cause damage to, or limit the performance of, such construction.”

Qureshi and her team received $132,000 over five years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant program to conduct the research. The funding will support research from at least five undergraduate students, three master’s students, two PhD students and potentially one post-doctoral fellow.

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