Structural and Earthquake Engineering
Team Contact: hse-see-team@cern.ch
Team Leader: Marco ANDREINI
The Structural and Earthquake Engineering team (SEE team) aims to provide high-level expertise and support to departments in matter of structural and seismic safety across CERN’s facilities throughout their entire lifecycle—from design and construction to operation and renovation. Multiple services are offered by the SEE team, as outlined below:
- Support for the acceptance of construction products from non-European Countries.
- Development of design guidance documents in matters of structural and earthquake engineering.
- Organising and giving CERN-wide training on design and assessment of structures in accordance with current and future European Regulations.
- Definition of structural and seismic safety design requirements for buildings and infrastructures, including equipment and installations.
- Support to the design of new structures and to the static and seismic retrofitting of existing buildings in accordance with the Eurocodes and Swiss standards.
- Verification and review of the design of civil and mechanical structures, along with large and complex civil engineering structures, structural components of equipment and installation, including conceptual and technical design specifications and related reports.
- On-site inspections to detect deficiencies in primary and secondary structural elements (e.g. false floors) and prioritize consolidation interventions.
- Seismic risk assessment of concrete/metallic block configurations for radiation shielding (in collaboration with SCE-TOD).
In the context of the HSE Technical Safety Research Programme, the SEE team leads and perform applied research in structural safety fields to go beyond the scope of the current standards and regulations for complex/non-conventional structures and infrastructures. The following research activities are on-going:
- Seismic behaviour of tanks and vessels,
- Seismic hazard knowledge improvement,
- Definition of the seismic design requirement for underground structures,
- Mechanical behavior of structures subject to fire,
- Seismic risk assessment at territorial scale,
- Seismic vulnerability of network, pipeline and installations,
in collaboration with Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia (Italy), National Technical University of Athens (Greece), University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy), Lebanese American University (Lebanon), Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), University of Trento (Italy), University of Liverpool (United Kingdom).