STRENGTH TEST: Engineers Dymtro Dizhur (left) from Ukraine and Iranian Jalil Shafaei, with Italian Ivan Giongo (front) prepare to shake the upper floor of 35B Victoria Ave, Wanganui.
STRENGTH TEST: Engineers Dymtro Dizhur (left) from Ukraine and Iranian Jalil Shafaei, with Italian Ivan Giongo (front) prepare to shake the upper floor of 35B Victoria Ave, Wanganui.
An international team of engineers from Auckland University has been testing a Wanganui building to near-destruction by simulating earthquakes.
Not many people would want to linger in an earthquake-torn city. But engineers are different.
When Dymtro Dizhur went to Christchurch after its worst earthquake in February 2011, he spent ayear there.
"Everybody was running but I didn't want to go home," he said.
He was working in Wanganui last week with a team that includes men from Ukraine, Italy and Iran. They have been visiting Wanganui since October 2012 and have made the most of an opportunity to test a typical early 1900s building almost to the point of destruction.
The two-storey unreinforced masonry building is 35B Victoria Ave. It is behind the George's Fisheries building and owner David Corney has consent to demolish it. He has donated it to the engineers for their project.
He made the offer after Auckland University's Professor Jason Ingham gave a talk to Wanganui's Earthquake Prone Building Taskforce.
Since then the research team has done hundreds of tests. They have tugged on its metal bracing until it broke, driven rods through its weak old bricks, put a skin of light plywood over weak floor sections, tested fire retardant plasterboard for earthquake strength, and tried linking together floor, walls and roof to support each other.
Some tests are routine and a bit boring, some are not.
The most exciting is the "snap-back test". They isolated one section of upstairs floor and subjected it to 10 tonnes of pressure, exerted by hydraulic jacks. The pressure was enough to create a 150mm bow in the floor section.
When they let that go the whole building vibrates but nothing falls down or gets damaged.
The moment the load is released after moving the floor joists 150mm out of alignment.
The building is made of unreinforced masonry, with brick walls two and three bricks thick, held together by lime mortar. It has an upstairs floor of native timber and is fairly typical of others in Wanganui and elsewhere in New Zealand.
The effect of the tests has been recorded and is the subject of a journal article and a conference presentation. The information is also available to the public, and was indirectly used by DML Builders in strengthening the Sarjeant Gallery's temporary home in Taupo Quay and Drews Ave.
It will also be applied to the heritage building at 49 Taupo Quay, which Mr Dizhur and fellow Auckland engineer Peter Liu have bought.
The Riverside Bar opened in it recently.
"We're still working on the design. It's quite a big beast.
"We're looking for a cost efficient design that won't affect the heritage value, particularly of the front facade," Mr Dizhur said.
