Tara Hutchinson
University of California-San Diego, CA·Engineering
Cities need buildings that are affordable, low in carbon, and able to survive earthquakes and other hazards. Mid-rise buildings framed with cold-formed steel (CFS) are one promising option.
- Fields
Engineering
- Topics
cold-formed steel
mid-rise buildings
earthquake engineering
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Test individual wall lines and building components of cold-formed steel framing to separate how designated shear walls, gravity walls, finishes and partitions each resist earthquake loads.
- Run full-scale benchmark earthquake tests of a mid-rise cold-formed steel building on the NHERI Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table at UC San Diego.
- Build and validate numerical building models that capture all major sources of nonlinear behavior in cold-formed steel buildings, as a basis for wider seismic studies and design methods.
More about the research
CFS is thin-walled steel shaped at room temperature. It is lightweight, durable, non-combustible and made from recycled material. These buildings use closely spaced vertical steel members repeated along the walls. Straps, sheets or sheathing attached to these members help the building resist sideways forces. Engineers designate certain walls, called shear walls, to resist earthquake loads. But it is not well understood how the rest of the building contributes during shaking, including gravity walls, finishes and interior partitions. These parts may add strength well beyond what was designed.
Why it matters
Better understanding of how whole cold-formed steel buildings behave in earthquakes could lead to improved design methods. Such methods could support low-cost, low-carbon, hazard-resilient mid-rise housing and offices in earthquake-prone regions. Engineers, building owners and residents would benefit. Openly shared shake table data and validated models can serve as a foundation for further seismic evaluation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
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