Taipei 18th Sept: UTM Faculty of Civil Engineering delegations bagged nine awards at an international built and test structure competition known as “Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools (IDEERS)” which was held recently at the Taiwan National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), Taipei from 13th to 16th September 2012.
The program was jointly organized by the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR), British Council, the Asia-Pacific Network of Centers for Earthquake Engineering Research (ANCER) and University of Bristol United Kingdom.
The dean of UTM Faculty of Civil Engineering, Professor Dr Shahrin Mohammad said that the UTM delegation comprises of two Postgraduate team namely Reliability Engineering and Safety Assessment Research Group (RESA-FKA-UTM) and Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Group (eSEER FKA-UTM) as well as two undergraduate teams from eSEER-FKA-UTM.
The postgraduate team, RESA-FKA-UTM under the advisory of Assoc Prof. Dr Nordin Yahaya won three awards thus deserved to be the first runner-up of the IDEERS overall achievement awards.
The team members are Dr Norhazilan Md Noor, Siti Nor Fariza, Lim Kar Sing and Libriati Zardasti. The structure is designed using a radical and unconventional concept of unique energy dissipation system; based on human B-DNA architecture; in addition has also won the best poster and most creative structure design awards.
This is the first time in the history of the competition, a structure model solely supported by energy dissipation system instead of the most preferable system of base-isolator to cater seismic load, manage to break into the top three position of the overall achievement award. The B-DNA damper has successfully outweighs the base-isolator system used by the other 18 competing teams resulting in an impressive 2nd place finish after the end of the shaking table test.
Another postgraduate team, eSEER FKA-UTM led by Mr Zamri Ramli and Prof. Azlan Adnan stunned the crowd by winning the best poster, best oral presentation and most creative architecture awards. The innovation and creativity of their mosque architecture model with post-tensioning column system and base-isolator has impressed juries and crowd. The team is represented by Nurul Norhamizah Mohd Pauzi, Yip Chun Chieh, Wong Jing Ying and Lee Hong Pin.
The undergraduate team under eSEER-FKA-UTM supervised by Mr. Mohd Nur Asmawisham Alel and Dr Norhisham Bakhary were also awarded with High Resistance certificate and Efficiency Ratio award to make it a total of nine awards won by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Both teams were represented by Mohamad Hafizullah A. Jalil, Mohamad Firdaus Shahidan, Muhamad Azree Zahir, Florence Teh Ming Ming, Muhammad Ariff Abdul Khalid, Nur Suryani Abdul Khalil, Rhuhaida Shahren and Yong Chin Yung.
A total of 101 teams and 484 participants from all around the world such as Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Germany, Greece, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Russia, Australia and many more. By winning nine awards indicate that UTM has a high standing and excellent reputation globally. The historic triumph by UTM delegation is a result of great cooperation between Faculty of Civil Engineering, eSEER Research Group, Construction Research Alliance (ICON) and Reliability Engineering and Safety Assessment Research Group (RESA).
The remarkable achievement by UTM delegation also commemorates the celebration of Malaysia Day on 16th of September.